Undercurrents: a wet look editorial for Falcon magazine
This beauty editorial for Falcon Magazine traces a visual evolution — from soft, minimalist beauty to something more surreal and emotionally raw. Created in collaboration with model Tanya Tseng and makeup artist Sarah Lumea, these fashion looks play with water and gloss as metaphors for transformation and inner upheaval. This shoot began as a study in elegance and ended somewhere closer to myth. Below, I break down the stages and symbolism behind each look.
Clean, no-makeup look, high-key aesthetic
We began with a clean, reflective aesthetic — sleek hair, radiant skin, and a serene surface. These first images feel pristine, untouched, like a muse paused mid-thought.
A bold turquoise lip introduces the aquatic theme
Gradually, the images darken. A sheer black blouse, green lips, and sharper contrast shift the tone. Tanya moves from passive beauty to something more actively expressive — almost defiant.
Wet look behind crumpled cellophane
At this point in the shoot, the styling began to feel cinematic, as though we’d wandered into a Tim Burton dream. I thought of a wilting bridal bouquet, dampened with sea spray.
Beauty as metamorphosis
Originally, I considered titling the shoot “Metamorphosis.” Under Sarah’s careful hands, Tanya’s look evolved step by step: from luminous and dewy to glossy, unkempt, even slightly chaotic. Vaseline, mist spray, wet strands — each stage introduced a new emotional register.
Playing on the duality of bright and dark, I envisioned Tanya not as a static beauty ideal, but as a figure caught in motion — swept from Olympus down into something more visceral. There’s an Apollonian–Dionysian tension in beauty photography: poised versus undone, muse versus mortal.
In the end, I couldn’t help but think of Baudelaire’s vision of beauty — seductive, disruptive, and full of contradiction:
“S’avançaient, plus câlins que les Anges du mal,
Pour troubler le repos où mon âme était mise,
Et pour la déranger du rocher de cristal
Où, calme et solitaire, elle s’était assise.”
“Advanced, more cajoling than angels of evil,
To trouble the quiet that had possessed my soul,
To dislodge it from the crag of crystal,
Where calm and alone it had taken its seat.”
Similarly, I felt that, swept by the undercurrent, our beauty series had culminated in some kind of image of Ophelia, watery yet pristine, like a mental breakdown in a glass coffin.
Published in Falcon magazine. Want to create something equally evocative? Contact me here.
