Rose Marie Reid Shoot

What do you do when your friend says, “Hey, my Grandmother was Rose Marie Reid.  My Mother has a whole closet full of her suits.  She will be here for another couple of days, but then all of the suits will go into an archive.  You should get some girls and do a shoot with them before she goes.”  Well, I will tell you what you do, you make it happen!  And that we did.  
First, we went over to their house the day before the shoot to try on some of the suits.  My girls had such a great time. Carole Reid Burr, who is the daughter of Rose Marie Reid, and who wrote a book about her Mother, told my girls all about the suits they were trying on.  ”Oh, that one was worn by Marilyn Monroe.”  Fact after fact was pouring out about these suits.  History was being told.  And these suits, oh what masterpieces they were.  So well crafted.  Each design was planned out so well to compliment a woman’s figure.  They pulled out images of old stars modeling the suits.  They also had posters of old advertisements.  There was one model who was laying down on a diving board that looked so much like my daughter Claire.  We tried to recreate it by having her lay on a surfboard, shown in the first photo.  We had a 1957 red Chevy convertible lined up for the shoot but of course the one day we had to do the shoot it rained.  Not just any rain, the heaviest storm we had here in Southern California for along time.  So we were stuck indoors.  Which turned out to be so fun!  I’m glad we did stay indoors.  I feel like the pictures show off the details of the suits better then if we had gone to an outdoor location.

This green suit with the buttons is the style that Marilyn Monroe wore.  I loved hearing about Rose Marie Reid.  Her accomplishments were great.  Her design was flawless.  Her suits are timeless.  The suits the girls were trying on were created from the 1930′s-1960′s.  My teens were saying, “I would wear this now, I want one like this, I wish I could find a suit like this now to buy.”

Brooke Heyman came and did all of the girls hair and make-up.  She is fabulous!  What attention to detail she has.  She came with the most creative ideas and made it so fun for the girls.

A special thank you to Carole Reid Burr for sharing all of the suits for the day with us and for sharing all of the stories that went with them.  And thank you to her for writing an article about her Mother for The Sandbucket Volume 2.