From the magazine: ISSUE 92, June/July 2014
For The FADER’s new issue, photo editor Geordie Wood shot Lana Del Rey. Here, he shares how the enigmatic mega-pop star ended up rolling around his bed in his vintage letterman jacket. Check out the final photos right here.
Geordie Wood: We didn’t have much time to put this shoot together, so I just said “Fuck it. Let’s do it at my house.” But the whole time, I’m thinking about how huge of a pop star Lana is, and how when you have 150 million YouTube views, everything has to be tight. One of our editors, Alex Frank, got on the phone with Lana’s stylist, Johnny Blueeyes, and told him we were thinking about possibly shooting at the photographer’s house. Johnny, who has known Lana forever, immediately jumped on the idea and was like, “Hell yes! What you think about Lana is not who she is. She likes to keep things super low-key.” I spent all day Saturday cleaning the house—I vacuumed, took the rug up and threw it in the basement. I scrubbed my bathtub upstairs. The morning of the shoot, I got up and drank way too much coffee and tried to arrange my bedroom in a way that she could set up her glam squad there.
Right at 1PM, on the dot, she showed up dressed in her first look, a white T-shirt and a leather jacket. We greeted her outside and she was as chill as could be. We were able to hang out and talk for a bit. Lana and her crew were ecstatic to have the shoot in the kind of plwhere she could just get comfortable. I showed all of them around my place, which feels like a country house in the middle of Williamsburg.
We went into my office, which also serves as my closet, and I showed her where she could set up. Immediately, Lana was like, “Oh my god, look at all this stuff, I love it!” Johnny comes in, like, “Oh my god! Lana, look at this!” They start trying stuff on. They totally thought that we pulled all these racks for her to use, but it just happened to be my personal wardrobe. I’m standing there like, “Holy shit. Lana Del Rey is trying on all my clothes—this is pretty bizarre.” She really liked this jacket that I got from my grand- father in Maine and a vintage letterman jacket that I bought from a Goodwill store. Lana ended up wearing my clothes for the majority of the shoot. Somehow, through a confluence of events, I was photographing Lana Del Rey in my house, dressed in my clothes. Like, how did I get here? How did I get to this point in my life, where Lana Del Ray is sitting on my bed, wearing my jacket?