Beyond the Frame

Boston Harbor, 10:36 a.m.

The first thing to arrive isn’t the camera. It’s the clothes.

Swimsuits are draped across a white leather couch, satin scarves peek from garment bags, and oversized sunglasses wait beside pairs of carefully chosen heels. Someone smooths a wrinkle from a linen set while another model slips into a metallic gown inspired by the mood board’s vision of the French Riviera—cat-eye glamour, effortless tailoring, nautical ease. The conversation is casual, interrupted only by the hiss of a steamer and the occasional question of, “Whose bag is this?”

Fashion has long borrowed from the mythology of leisure. The French Riviera, in particular, has become less of a destination than a visual vocabulary: crisp linens, yacht decks, silk scarves, bronzed skin, and the seductive promise that the wearer has nowhere urgent to be. It is an aesthetic built on ease.

Ironically, nothing about creating it is effortless.

Every editorial photograph asks viewers to believe in a fantasy. Behind every image of someone appearing perfectly at ease is a small ecosystem of people carrying garment bags, adjusting collars, hauling equipment, fixing windswept hair, and chasing the afternoon light before it disappears. The labor is intentionally invisible.

But perhaps the most invisible part isn’t the work itself. It’s the people doing it.

Spend enough time behind the scenes, and the fantasy begins to dissolve—not because it isn’t beautiful, but because the people inhabiting it are infinitely more interesting than the image they create.

No one aboard the ship is only a model.

For Shawna Piers, modeling began almost accidentally. A senior portrait opened the door to an industry she hadn’t imagined herself entering, eventually leading her to campaigns, freelance work, and editorials. Today, between shoots, she serves and bartends while continuing to build her career.

She laughs when asked what “effortless” means in fashion.

“It’s going at the pace you’re comfortable with,” she says. “Bringing to the table what you can.”

The word itself has become one of fashion’s favorites. Effortless style. Effortless beauty. Effortless elegance.

Yet Shawna’s version has little to do with pretending not to try. It means taking care of yourself, understanding your body, traveling with half your wardrobe packed into oversized suitcases, and constantly networking in an industry where your next opportunity often comes through the relationships you’ve built.

Looking effortless, it turns out, requires remarkable effort.

Orla Roche understands that confidence is part of the craft.

Discovered at seventeen inside a Newbury Street salon, modeling unexpectedly altered the course of her life. Today, alongside editorial work, she spends her weekdays working for Best Buddies, a nonprofit dedicated to creating opportunities for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

For Orla, the camera responds less to appearance than certainty.

“Knowing your craft,” she says. “Not second-guessing yourself.”

That confidence, however, is earned through invisible discipline: protecting your physical health, managing outside pressures, learning your angles, and understanding a creative director’s vision before ever stepping in front of the lens.

The photographs may communicate leisure. The preparation resembles something much closer to performance.

Across the deck, Lindsey Mazzeo adjusts the fabric of a silver metallic gown before changing into a vibrant fuchsia dress inspired directly by the day’s mood board.

Pageantry first introduced her to modeling, but she speaks about both with unexpected depth. The greatest lesson, she says, wasn’t winning titles. It was meeting women whose ambition existed beyond appearances.

“People see the beauty,” she explains. “They don’t always see everything behind it.”

When asked about effortless style, Lindsey doesn’t mention trends or designer labels.

“It’s about focusing on the fit and the fabric,” she says. “The emphasis is on the human body.”

Her answer quietly reframes fashion itself. Clothes succeed not because they demand attention but because they allow the person wearing them to feel entirely themselves.

Perhaps the hardest work in modeling isn’t physical at all.

“It’s the internal work,” she says. “Being comfortable with a camera on you. Learning not to judge yourself by your worst photo.”

For Sheile Shahram, modeling feels less like posing than dancing.

A wellness and fitness coach outside the industry, she was drawn to the shoot’s references to 1950s and ’60s Riviera glamour. Satin sets. Polka dots. Scarves tied neatly around the neck.

“It’s fun,” she says. “We don’t dress like that anymore.”

She defines effortless style differently than many would expect.

You can wear an oversized T-shirt and shorts, she says. Add a statement bag or a favorite piece of jewelry, and suddenly it feels intentional.

Effortlessness, in her eyes, isn’t perfection.

It’s comfort with purpose.

The contrast between fantasy and reality becomes even sharper when talking with Bridget Durkin.

She has walked New York Fashion Week, appeared in film, and modeled editorials, but on most days she isn’t thinking about wardrobe changes or mood boards.

She’s thinking about patients.

A psychiatric charge nurse, Bridget spends three or four days each week working in mental health before stepping back into fashion whenever opportunities arise. Though these two careers seem worlds apart, she doesn’t treat them that way.

Fashion satisfies one part of her creativity. Nursing fulfills another part of her identity—the camera captures only one.

And the same contradiction extends beyond the people in front of the lens.

Behind another camera, Hannah Dhom moves quietly through the set.

Unlike the editorial photographers focused on the final campaign images, Hannah is documenting everything in between: shared laughter, wardrobe adjustments, fleeting expressions, the moments that disappear once everyone knows they’re being watched.

Before moving to Boston earlier this year, she spent years photographing landscapes after earning her degree in fine arts. Nature remains her first love.

People came later.

“I love taking photos when no one’s looking,” she says.

The statement feels fitting. Behind-the-scenes photography exists to preserve the moments that never become advertisements—the humanity between performances.

Making someone comfortable, Hannah explains, is what makes them beautiful.

Hannah is not the only person behind the camera whose life exists far outside the world being photographed.

Harris Davey, one of the day’s principal photographers, is among the most sought-after editorial photographers in New England and New York. But photography is only one of several lives he occupies. He is also a musician, runs his church choir, and volunteers more than forty hours a week at a mental health hospital.

His camera may spend the day capturing beauty, but his life is deeply rooted in service.

Beside him, Mike Fawcett—known professionally as DRIPPIXX—is operating in an entirely different professional world. Widely regarded as one of the country’s leading large-business anti-terror and crisis-management trainers, his work involves preparing organizations for the moments no one wants to imagine: bomb threats, mass shootings, and other critical emergencies.

On a yacht dressed in Riviera glamour, those realities feel impossibly distant.

Yet that is precisely what makes the contrast compelling.

The people creating an image of carefree luxury are not insulated from the complexities of ordinary life. They carry them with them.

The same is true of the people responsible for creating the faces that appear so effortlessly polished.

Noel McKinnon, one of the makeup artists on set, has worked with a who’s who of fashion, film, and pageantry around the world. Her connection to the industry is familial as well as professional: her daughter, Azaria McKinnon, is a designer and influencer in Miami, while her father, Bud Abell, played in the NFL for the Kansas City Chiefs and participated in the first Super Bowl.

Beauty, in her case, exists within a lineage of performance, culture, and ambition.

Lisa Van Orden brings another kind of pageantry expertise to the set. The founder and owner of Lavo Beauty Co., she is also the current Mrs. New Hampshire USA and a mentor to Mykala Green, the current Miss Maine. Her career moves fluidly between entrepreneurship, beauty, competition, and mentorship—another reminder that the people behind a polished image are rarely confined to a single role.

Watching the day unfold, it becomes increasingly difficult to separate labor from leisure.

The Riviera-inspired clothing suggests escape, yet everyone aboard the yacht has somewhere else to be tomorrow.

A nonprofit office.

A psychiatric hospital.

A fitness studio.

A restaurant shift.

A beauty company.

A church choir.

Another photoshoot.

Another city.

The fashion industry often asks viewers to imagine that beauty exists effortlessly, independent of work or ordinary life. Yet the people bringing this editorial to life resist that simplification. They are professionals in more ways than one.

Models, yes.

But also caregivers, advocates, artists, entrepreneurs, athletes, photographers, mentors, musicians, nurses, and business leaders.

The camera captures only a fraction of who they are.

By late afternoon, dresses are carefully zipped back into garment bags. Makeup is softened. Jewelry is packed away. The white couches empty as quickly as they filled that morning.

The yacht itself carries a story of labor behind its luxury. Owned by Peter, CEO of SchureMed, a medical device company specializing in orthopedic and surgical technologies, the vessel reflects a lifelong relationship with the water. His grandfather gave him his first boat at six years old—with one condition: he had to fix it up himself. Decades later, after building a career in medical innovation, Peter owns a fleet of yachts and charter vessels, a reminder that even leisure is often the result of years of dedication.

Soon, the finished editorial will exist exactly as intended: polished, aspirational, transporting. Readers will admire the styling, the Riviera references, the silhouettes catching the wind against Boston Harbor.

What they won’t immediately see are the lives waiting just beyond the edge of the frame.

And perhaps that’s fashion’s greatest illusion.

Not that leisure can be manufactured—but that the people creating it are ever only the image itself.