All articles

Behind the Scenes: the Spring/Summer Shoot

Behind the Scenes: The Spring/Summer photo shoot

Few things can transport your mind to another place, another mood, than a perfectly captured image. With winter still raging outside our windows, plunging into hazy, sun-drenched summer snapshots is a welcome break for your imagination. We took a peek behind the scenes at the URBANARA Spring/Summer 2019 lifestyle shoot to get ourselves geared up for sunnier days and warmer moods. Creating a stunning summer world across two airy loft apartments in Berlin’s beautiful Tiergarten neighbourhood, the shoot was brought together by in-house and external creative talents alike. Across three surprisingly sunny days in February, a dedicated team comprised of a photographer, videographer, stylist and assistants, with art direction by URBANARA's Creative Manager, Dora Monogyiou, created a world of warmth, laughter and style, which was captured in the resulting photographs. We sat down with Dora to get a little inside information on her inspirations behind the shoot, and for the upcoming season.

Don’t forget to switch the sound on for full enjoyment!


pampas grass

Dora, where did you find inspiration for the look and feel you wanted to capture for the upcoming season?

For this season, we were inspired by nature for our colours, lines and textures, but we also introduced some more vibrant colour accents inspired by the 1970s, which we matched with our natural, soft palette in order to create a calming, timeless and sophisticated, but at the same time playful and fresh look.

Our main motivation was to show to people who live in cities how they can bring this fresh spring-summer feeling into their homes, and with just a few additions feel like nature isn’t so far away after all. The softness of an organic cotton blanket, the natural feel of linen bed linen and a basket made from sustainable and fast-growing grass, together with a minimal art piece and pampas grass in a vase on the floor can make your home feel like your personal sanctuary even in the centre of a busy town.

The biggest challenge for us was to capture the textures and convey the feel of the textiles to our customers, since these are such important elements of our new designs. We also got inspired by the landscapes found at the outskirts of Berlin and its lakes, which you will see more of in our campaign as we get closer to summer.

Do you find collaboration with other creatives helps your own creative process for lifestyle shoots?

Definitely. The look and feel that you see in our photos and videos is a result of teamwork from all the creative teams at URBANARA. We have our own in-house creative team, consisting of graphic designers, content creators and copywriters and of course our product development team, with whom we work closely months before the lifestyle shoot to come up with the roadmap and the colour palette for the season.

An interesting fact for this season is that all the art pieces that you can see in our photos were made by talented colleagues in-house. During the preparation and the lifestyle shoot, our external collaborators, Berlin studio se7entyn9ne who were our photographer and stylist, and George Rosolymos, our cinematographer, also contributed creatively and had a big impact on the final result. Everything you see is a result of teamwork!

pink protea flower
reeds with cactus, woven slippers and woven tray

What are you most excited for in the new Spring/Summer collection?

I absolutely love all our new linen products! I especially like our new basic bedlinen collection, Tolosa, in soft colours with coconut buttons, as well as the Etova curtains, with handmade sewn pleats. I love the softness of the Laussa organic cotton blanket, the colour of our terracotta Anadia bedspread, and of course there’s the Salaya jute rug, the mort luxurιοus jute rug I have ever seen. There’s also our practical cotton canvas Silna floor cushion, for when you have guests over — I could talk for hours about our new collection...

videographer with camera
art watercolour pieces with cactus and rug