gIRL series: Olive

I’ve been wanting to include my wonderful friend Olive in the gIRL series from the start. I had enough photos of her from our travels over the years to create one but I wanted to shoot her specifically for it, and capture how I see her IRL rather than just shots we have most likely taken for social.

Olive is someone I would count as one of my closest friends these days, but funnily enough when we first met (in 2014 in Sydney) we didn’t bond quite so closely. We had mutual friends and would be at the same parties and say hi but it wasn’t until I was visiting Australia for the first time since I had moved back to London, when she invited me to go and stay with her in Byron for a few days that we really clicked. We spent 3 days laughing and swimming and eating and having the funnest time (isn’t it great that feeling when you know you’ve made a real friend?). And from then we love  to travel together. We both work for ourselves and love travelling so our trips are something we often plan last minute (our California toad trip for example, was booked 3 days before). It’s a perfect fit for us as we can work and also have a holiday. When I was younger I always dreamed of  a friend I would travel the world and take photos with, and Olive is the reality of that.

Olive is one of the kindest, most understanding, funny – and strongest – women I know. She is beautiful, of course, but to me that isn’t her most impressive quality. She is wildly creative – having recently launched her beautiful sustainable swim and resort brand Cooke & Kin – caring, patient and someone I am so grateful to have in my life, our travels have become something so special to me.

In Favignana a few weeks ago, we shot  the photos below.

Here are her thoughts on beauty;