From The Straits Times    |

For several days in early January 2014, fashionistas the world over gathered in the Italian city of Florence in the beautiful Tuscany region to celebrate the eighth installment of #firenze4ever, luxury online boutique Luisaviaroma’s bi-annual styling event for an exclusive list of fashion VIPs.

Ethno-morphic excitement at Luisaviaroma Daniel Boey STREETSTYLE SHOOTOn top of the (fashion) world: Daniel Boey being “street style” shot at Luisaviaroma’s Firenze4Ever event in Florence, Italy, wearing Bodybound. Image: Daniel Boey

Soaking in the culture, history and fashion of the Renaissance centre were fashion personalities and style bloggers the likes of bryanboy, Gary Pepper Girl, BagSnob, Wendy Nguyen, Peter Xu and BoyNam, the German girls from Les Mads, and the Milanese blogger behind The Fashion Fruit, rubbing shoulders with a myriad of fashion editors from Europe, the US, Mexico, South America and Asia.

Ethno-morphic excitement at Luisaviaroma Daniel Boey WITH BOY NAMEthno-morphic excitement at Luisaviaroma Daniel Boey ON FILM
Daniel with top blogger Boy Nam (above top) and being interviewed on film for Luisaviaroma’s Firenze4Ever event. Images: Daniel Boey

As the South-East Asian ambassador of Luisaviaroma, I was honoured to be invited to the lovely city to be part of this festival, and my team and I spent four glorious, fun-filled days filming fashion vignettes and style interviews, shooting street-fashion editorials, gracing exquisite dinners at dramatic venues and partaking of exciting
fashion activities.

Ethno-morphic excitement at Luisaviaroma Daniel Boey STREETSTYLE 2Daniel being shot for street style editorial. Image: Daniel Boey

One of these fashion activities was StyleLab, a 30-part mega fashion editorial created by the participating fashion trendsetters, each contributing their own unique sense of style and fashion vision to the looks. I collaborated with the genius folks from Vlisco, a group of fabric designers from Holland who use traditional printing techniques ‒ similar to batik ‒ to create modern, whimsical printed fabrics, to create a series of looks inspired by the Ethno-morphic theme.

Ethno-morphic excitement at Luisaviaroma Daniel Boey AT WORK

I was assisted by my able stylist, Singaporean Audrey Ong ‒ who created the complimentary looks for the female model ‒ and the lovely and patient Christina from the Luisaviaroma, who pulled the requested pieces in the right model sizes and coordinated the logistics of transportation and transfer of clothes to and from the external venue, ensuring the completion of the shoot in the assigned two hours.

Ethno-morphic excitement at Luisaviaroma Daniel Boey THE SHOOTArtist at work … Behind-the-scenes shot from Daniel Boey’s Style Lab for Luisaviaroma Firenze4Ever. Image: Daniel Boey

I worked with not one, but two photographers, the Italian Tommaso Ferri and Asian photographer DMC ‒ who had earlier photographed me for a brilliant street-style story ‒ each shooting the story from their individual perspective.

Ethno-morphic excitement at Luisaviaroma Daniel Boey STYLING 1Ethno-morphic excitement at Luisaviaroma Daniel Boey STYLING 2
Daniel’s work for Luisaviaroma’s Firenze4Ever Style Lab. Images: Luisaviaroma

Bringing the looks to life were the gorgeous male model, Italo, and a Asian beauty from Malaysia, Suzanne Lau. Both  worked quickly through the winter chill ‒ they were modelling looks from the Spring 2014 collections ‒ without complaining, playing expertly to two different photographers simultaneously like seasoned pros.

Luisaviaroma is a treasure trove of amazing fashion and accessories, and it was hard to sieve out only the best pieces to create just three looks ‒ we were greedy and created five, pulling fave pieces from a variety of labels including Marni, Dries Van Noten, Saint Laurent Paris, Giorgio Armani and Giuseppe Zanotti ‒ for the afternoon’s shoot.

Ethno-morphic excitement at Luisaviaroma Daniel Boey THE TEAMThe Daniel Boey team: Shooting for Luisaviaroma Firenze4Ever Style Lab were mix of international and Singapore talents. Image: Daniel Boey

The store was highly interactive, and customers could not only shop the physical pieces, but also online, placing pre-orders for items not yet in-store. My team and I were in fashion heaven and it was definitely one of the highlights of a highlight-filled festival.

Luisaviaroma’s Firenze4Ever Spring Summer 2014 event took place from january 407, 2014. My team and I stayed at the lovely Savoy Hotel on the Piazza Della Repubblica, with a fantastic view of the Duomo from my window, and a stone’s throw away from the Luisaviaroma store.

To shop Luisaviaroma, go to www.luisaviaroma.com. To see, and shop, Daniel’s Luisaviaroma StyleLab shoot, go to www.luisaviaroma.com/firenze4ever-8th-edition-danielboey. To read more from Daniel, check out his blog at misterdanielboey.com. You can follow Daniel on Facebook at www.facebook.com/DanielBoey, on Twitter at @_danielboey and on Instagram at @danielboey.