Converting from designer to packshot retoucher

[Myrto]

Hello everyone,

I am new to this forum so I would like to say hello and introduce myself as well as ask for some advice

I'm a fashion designer with 10 years experience in the luxury sector , having worked in London and now in Paris but this career has made its circle for me and now I'm ready to go on with something different.

Through all these years I have spent long hours almost every working day working on Photoshop and the last years I have also gained some experience in retouching packshot photos for the fashion house I work for. I believe that the combination of skills on Photoshop with the experience and aesthetics of a fashion designer can be a very good advantage for someone who is interested in retouching packshots of garments.

Therefore I'm really interested in getting myself into this business, working if possible from home as a freelancer and ideally getting to work for fashion companies, e-shops or photography agencies on the luxury sector which is the sector I know better from my experience. The problem is I don't exactly know how to get the right contacts in this field, how to meet the right photographers , agents etc. I am mostly looking for good agencies in Paris that would be able to get me to the right clients and projects, so that I keep a freelance status and independency.

I would extremely appreciate your thoughts on my online portfolio www.myrtostamou.com and of course any thoughts in general about how to get into the business or how I could find the right agencies etc.

Thank you for your time in any case!

 

[Derrel]

I looked at 15 examples of so....as a clothing buyer, I think I might be disappointed to see that the pinched-waist jacket, or the straight-legged jeans are actually 1) a roomy jacket with room for the waist of a normal woman and 2)slightly flared-leg pants, not stove-pipe-straight-leggged jeans as your retouching has created.

I get the idea of retouching, but you've taken ladies clothing and created a defintely FALSE impression of the style, and the cut, on numerous clothing items.

All retouched so invisibly, and so well that it's impossible to see the fakery. Perhaps it's acceptable on pack shots, but for clothing catalogue work, this degree of changing of the clothing's style and fit/dimensions, would likely cause some disappointed buyers OR buyers would reject the items and NOT buy them because they could never possibly fit into the retouched styled clothing items.

 

[Myrto]

Dear Derrel,

Firstly thank you for taking the time to look at and review my portfolio. I really need and appreciate any comment as I am trying to introduce myself in a new proffessional field.

Your comment makes sense to me from the point of you of a buyer who would feel as you say that the retouched photos are faked and do not correspond to reality. However as I happen to work as a fashion designer for the fashion house to which most of the garments on my portfolio belong to I have a good idea of what the real fit of these garments is and therefore I retouch them to look the closer to the real fit possible.

Unfortunately the packshot of a garment worn by a plastic mannequin (used for these kind of photos ) looks never the same way it will look on a real girl , it usually looks badly worn, with a weird fit , strange wrinkles etc ,so exactly the way the raw photos look on my portfolio. So at the end the reality is actually closer to the retouched photo than the unretouched one. Also as my retouching work is always supervised by the artistic and commercial directors the final photos are the ones that reflect to their eyes the actual way each garment looks.

All this just to explain that there is not fakery really, it's maybe a bit more idealistic image (as every retouched image no? ) of a waisted jacket and a pair of skinny jeans that is actually a waisted jacket and a pair of skinny jeans....that actually sell for more than 500€ a piece so I think their photos should also look this way.