This year I've slept in hotel rooms more than my own room
Hotels start to feel like home

Sometimes my Sundays feel like a David Lynch script.

This Month I went twice to Cali which starts to feel like home.
At the end of the shoot, I jumped in a convertible with Morgan to get some
peace & quiet in the desert.
It was Dinah Shore festival....
We witnessed a bunch of girls acting like they were dudes on their first
spring break.
We drove 40 miles off to 29 palms where we stayed at the cutest inn.
I had a chance to behave like a real dude and I shot my first beer like a
teenager.

NEW YORK CITY GIRL ANOUCK BERTIN: A TFS EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
by Faith Bowman





‘NewYorkCityGirl’/fashion photographer Anouck Bertin In a world of blogs,
‘NewYorkCityGirl’ stands out. Written by
fashion photographer Anouck Bertin , it has a
sweetness that’s missing from so many other fashion sites. Scrolling
through, there is a sense of someone who is, at heart, a good person - not
just some style junkie looking to score.

Her entries tell us what it’s like to be a girl living in New York, helping
her friends through breakups, writing snippets of commentary that sparkle
with fun, and posting pictures from around the world. Plus there’s the
tearsheets she’s racking up, because she’s one of the hottest fashion
photographers on the scene.
Working with such style bibles as *Status* and *Nylon*, Bertin’s quickly
establishing herself as the go-to girl for sassy, 80’s-infused girly
photographs that jump off the page and out of the screen.

Anouck took a moment to answer some questions about her work, her blog, and
what lies ahead for the fashion industry.


*The Fashion Spot: What is your background in fashion?*

Anouck Bertin: When I was 17 years old, I moved to Paris from Mexico City,
where I was born and raised. In Mexico I was pretty much cut out of the
fashion industry. We didn’t even have chain stores like Gap. My mother was a
model when she was young, and I recall being fascinated by all her modeling
pictures, and the vintage dresses, and crazy accessories that she was
wearing in the 60's. That was my only window to fashion for a pretty long
time.

It was a shock to discover that fashion existed at such a huge level when I
moved to Paris. I have to say I got pretty hooked into all the glitter, the
sparkles, and the pretty things going on around me. So I started working at
a French teenager magazine when I turned 22 years old. I gave up accounting,
and started learning most of the French designers’ names and collections. I
had a lot of catching up to do. I was obsessed with fashion and working at a
magazine was a good excuse for me to keep track of what was going on in the
industry in France. But also it was a good excuse to have easy access to it.
Yes I have to admit that I learned about the existence of fashion week when
I was 22 years old!

After working behind the scenes for a while, I decided to pick up a camera
and started shooting. I started shooting for the magazines where I was a
picture editor, but I wasn’t given any fashion assignments. And fashion
photography was my goal.

So after a few years, I decided to board a plane for New York, and that was
a whole other scale of fashion that I had to deal with. I had to study in my
room a lot more to reach the NYC standard fashion level. When it comes to
fashion talk, it’s hard to pick up the pace when most of the designers you
know are French. But in NY, you have to learn about the designers of all the
countries, not just the American ones. I need to thank personally the person
who invented Style.com, because it’s a real database for dummies in fashion!

*
TFS: Why did you decide to start a blog?*

AB: I started my blog when I moved to New York in 2005. I started it to keep
in touch with my friends in France. It was my way to keep them updated about
my daily adventures being a New York City Girl. That is why it’s called
'NewYorkCityGirl'. Trust me, in the beginning I had a lot to say about NY.
It was a whole other world. I’m not pushing it by saying another planet. I
had such crazy adventures that first year that I needed to write them down
and share them with my friends.

At the time I was only shooting Polaroids. In 2005, not a lot of people had
Polaroid blogs, so I guess I intrigued by posting them online. And then
Polaroid shut down and they started to be rare and super expensive. I almost
closed down my blog at that time. I was really crushed by the news. I mean,
Polaroids are the best thing photography invented and I couldn’t believe
they went out of business. I have hundreds of them, but apparently it was
not enough to keep the factory going!

Then I discovered that digital pictures were not that bad…


*TFS: When you write, do you have a specific type of reader in mind? Who
would you like to reach?*

AB: I started writing my blog in French, because most of my readers were
French. I used to write a lot at the beginning, but then it became more and
more a picture blog, relating my life and feelings through images. I thought
images could say it better than my own writing. Especially when I express
myself in English. I just write the way I speak, which ends up being a
pretty funny weird way of writing. That is because I don’t speak perfect
English, so I tend to invent the words when I don’t know them.

Right now I’m thanking Microsoft Word for correcting my spelling on all the
words I’m typing - but Word is not very good at grammar. To be honest, I
really have no idea who my readers are. I would guess more girls? I say that
because my photography is pretty girly, but who knows. I don’t have a
particular target for my readers, and I hope they all feel welcome. I just
wish for them to find a sentence or an image that will touch them, whoever
they are.

*
TFS: How has blogging impacted the fashion industry, in your opinion?*

AB: Blogs have impacted the fashion industry on a huge scale. A good friend
of mine who is a blogger told me that she had more readers than*Vogue* per
month. That is when I realized how much bloggers have impacted the fashion
industry. They became the new trendsetters and by posting daily so many
images on the Internet, they have provided us with the biggest database.
Blogs are an endless pond of resources for trends, brands inspiration, and
magazines. The only thing that really upsets me about blogs is that I think
they are killing the printed magazines. I love magazines so much, and I’m
really sad to see them closing down, one after the other.


*TFS: Do you have any long-term goals for your blog, and if so, what are
they?*

AB: Not really - I don’t have an investment plan for it. I have to admit I
don’t like it when little bloggers become the big thing and lose a lot of
what they were at the beginning. It’s sad, because that is why they got all
the attention in the first place. But some of them know how to keep their
style, and they are the ones still going strong. And I admire them a lot for
it.

I just think it’s important to stick to your style and personality and not
try to become someone you are not. I just want to keep publishing images
when I feel like it. I need to feel free about what I want to publish. I
don’t want it to become a daily weight on my shoulders, or feel pressured by
anyone.

A famous make-up brand contacted me a few years ago to blog for them,
because they liked the way I wrote. But pretty quickly they gave me themes
and asked me not to talk about certain things or name certain brands. I just
felt stuck with all of their conditions, so I decided to stop blogging for
them. I felt I was losing my voice with so many rules, and going in circles
because I couldn’t let me imagination wander on crazy subjects.

So far I really enjoy keeping it updated, because it involves my world and
my daily life. I don’t feel pressured to blog everyday or keep it super
updated. I’m not scared about losing readers or maintaining a certain number
of hits per day.

I think it’s important not to force anything because when you do, that is
when you start losing the quality of your blog. I have thousands images I
could blog, but I publish only the ones that set my mood of the day.

Keep up with Anouck at her website and her
blog .

Special thanks to Anouck’s friend Garance
Dore for
contributing her photographs.