Site icon Mary Jean Murphy

Mourning Glory/ Beauty Editorial / New Orleans

maryjeanmurphy
Fashion Editorial New Orleans Lafayette Cemetery with creative team from Urban Elements Salon Petaluma

Lafayette Cemetery with Urban Elements Salon

  • Mourning Glory
    Mourning Glory is a beauty editorial photographed at the iconic Lafayette Cemetery in New Orleans. The creative team from Urban Elements Salon were Inspired by the Victorian Era practice of making wreathes, jewelry and art out of the hair of deceased relatives and loved ones.
  • Hair jewelry was common
    In its heyday, hair jewelry was considered both sentimental and fashionable. It caught on in Europe sometime before the 19th century, and then fell into vogue in the United States around the Civil War.
    BACK TO OVERVIEW
  • Sleeping Beauty
    “It was really an ode to the person's essence.”
  • Queen Victoria
    Queen Victoria was the monarch of mourning, a celebrity who influenced how grieving women dressed and behaved in Europe and the United States.
    BACK TO OVERVIEW
  • Art of dying
    For Queen Victoria, the real art was in mourning. After her husband, Prince Albert, died in 1861, she publicly grieved him until her own death 40 years later. Often, Victoria wore a locket of Albert’s hair around her neck.
    BACK TO OVERVIEW
  • Prince Albert
    At least eight pieces of jewelry were made by the royal jewelers, Garrard’s, with Prince Albert’s hair, one of which included hair of other royal family members. This, in turn, helped to popularize mourning jewelry.
    BACK TO OVERVIEW
  • FEMME FATALE
    These objects joined other rituals of 19th-century grief that were both popular and obligatory, including elaborate mourning dress and posthumous portraits of corpses.
    BACK TO OVERVIEW
  • Leather and Lace
    A clip or lock of hair, will keep its color for decades, even centuries.
  • Dark Beauty
    These works of hair art share a sense of intimacy, as many were intended to be worn on the body or displayed in the home.
    BACK TO OVERVIEW
  • Modern Vintage
    Modern rendition created by "Urban Elements" Salon
  • Victorian Style
    “Women of the 19th century would swap locks of hair as a love token
    the way young girls today might wear friendship bracelets,”
  • Age of Sentiment
    “The Victorians were also famously sentimental. Hair art, which could be used to commemorate the living or dead beloved, perfectly merges the fashion for mourning and sentimentality.
    BACK TO OVERVIEW
  • Hair as art
    The hairpieces took arduous effort and skill to create
  • A moment in time
    There was a pretty abrupt stop once World War I took the focus and demanded people’s attention
    BACK TO OVERVIEW
  • end of an era
    The popularity of hair work diminished with the outbreak of World War I. “People were expected to donate as much money as possible to the war” or volunteer. “I think that really just put a stop to all the sentimentality and the over-the-top mourning and rituals.”

This blog post is dedicated to the seven beautiful and talented women (and Corey) from Urban Elements Salon  in Petaluma CA. who went to New Orleans for this haunting beauty editorial photoshoot!

You may have seen a few of these images on Urban Elements billboard on Washington Street!

My adventure started with having to get on a 737 Max 8 just before they were grounded. I wasn’t terribly worried after we reached altitude. The previous Max 8 crashes happened shortly after take off.
When I arrived Rachel and Corey picked about 10 pounds of Crawfish. I couldn’t stomach them (because of the flight) but it was entertaining to watch the girls bite the heads off and suck out the juice!
Shortly after arrival Rachel, Dylanne and I went to a home called “Covenstead” for a photoshoot. It’s an experience I will NEVER forget! But that’s a story for another time.

Lafayette Cemetery No. 1
The next day was the “Mourning Glory” beauty editorial photoshoot in New Orlean’s iconic Lafayette No. 1 Cemetery. I had heard about the cemeteries in New Orleans…. they aren’t like a regular cemetery. Because New Orleans is below sea level, people can’t be buried in the ground. They are all crypts.
( New Orleans is situated slightly below sea level. Because of this, the water table is quite high. When early European settlers put coffins under six feet of earth, they found that the water level would often rise above them, especially during the city’s frequent floods. Since the coffins were filled with air, the water sometimes pushed them up through the earth, causing both a gruesome sight and a health hazard. To keep the coffins underground, holes were drilled in the lid to let air escape, and the coffins were weighted down with rocks and sand. But this was only partially successful, and in any case the saturated corpses did not decompose properly, leading to unsanitary conditions. The only solution was to bury the dead above ground.)
After we were done at the cemetery there was a quick change then off to the main event….. Raw Artists-New Orleans https://www.rawartists.org/neworleans The 3 models CeCe, Lindsey and Dylanne strutted their stuff on the catwalk and on pedestals. They looked Fabulous and rocked their roles as 2 brides and a groom. Photos from the RAW show below….
We stopped for some delicious beignets after the show, then home to SF next day.
Creative Direction- Rachel Nixon & ALi Sutter
Lead Hairstylist – Rachel Nixon  https://www.facebook.com/rachel.nixon.10
Makeup – ALi Sutter  https://www.facebook.com/aliena1
Hairstylist – Lindsey Neuerburg https://www.facebook.com/lindsey.neuerburg
Nails- Jessica Scott https://www.facebook.com/jess.scott.designs
Salon- Urban Elements Salon https://www.facebook.com/urbanelementssalon/
Models – Dylanne, Lindsey and Cece
And a Great BIG Thank You to Corey for making sure I never had to go without Starbucks!

 RAW Artists show  New Orleans               2019

Exit mobile version