One of the abiding eccentricities of glossy print magazines is that we put together our Spring and Summer issues in the midst of autumn and the dead of winter, and vice versa. It means we find ourselves shooting swimwear as the snow falls and shearling when the sun shines. It’s often surreal and occasionally headache-inducing, but we beat on…
Our cover shoot with Cillian Murphy, for the Spring issue, took place in mid-October, in a leafy suburb of Dublin, the city the actor calls home. We had an excellent location, a charmingly tumbledown stately home to the west of the City. And, clearly, a surpassingly stylish leading man. The trick would be making all the newest warm-weather clothes look good in brisk mid-Autumn.
Tom Craig, who took the pictures, is a master of natural light photography, but even he can’t make the sun shine. Over Guinness the night before the shoot, we prayed to the meteorological gods, and thankfully they answered. Murphy arrived on set at around 10am the next morning, and by the time we’d got him into the first look, a crystalline sun was bathing the modest ballroom in light. It stayed, on and off, for the rest of the day, and was its most beguiling at around 5pm, allowing us to capture what we all quickly realised would be the cover image.
The above picture was taken as we prepped for the last shot of the day, captured as the sun was dipping beneath the treeline. Murphy’s shirt, on loan from Black Crows Vintage in Dublin city centre, had just set free one of its aged buttons, and, as the shoot’s stylist, I was desperately trying to reattach the one measly shard I had found on the floor. Tom’s assistant Maya can be seen taking a hurried light measurement as he tried to eke out one last picture. I think we got it, but I’m sad to report that the remains of that button were lost to the wind.
Cillian wears corduroy blazer, £695, by Drakes, and selected vintage pieces by Nine Crows
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