Portrait: Agnete Bjerre-Madsen founder of Moons and Junes

Meet Agnete.

First this girl had me with her creation of the beautiful universe of Moons and Junes, that I stumbled upon on Instagram.
Then she had me even more when I met her in real life for a morning coffee at The Union Kitchen down town CPH. Meeting young creatives is something I really cherish and try to do as often as possible. There is little more inspiring than having a conversation with a young brain rather explosive of ideas. 

 
 

Moons and junes

.. is a copenhagen based lingerie brand. My immediate impression was that it wants to fill in a gap of basic, but beautiful and sexy in its simplicity and quality, lingerie for all women, which I later found out was perfectly true. This impression mainly came from the beautiful visual presentation on the Instagram-user, which is heavy loaded with pictures of women with all kinds of different beauty features: colored/pale skin, curvy/sporty, old/young, tall/short, preggo/not. It had a very honest and intimate feeling. 

Talk and 2nd meet

Since I came across Moons and Junes I've had an urge to contact them - but for various reasons I never got to make the approach. For my luck and big surprise, a message ticked into my direct messages inbox from Agnete, and then I was quick to suggest to meet up for a coffee and a talk instead of leaving it with a digital chat and compliments going both ways.

Walking away from that talk we had, 1st of all I didn't want to leave yet and 2nd of all I knew I had to shoot some stills of Agnete and do a little story about her motive of her business. She absolutely blew me away with her flow of radiating energy. Damn ladyboss. 

 

So we did. We used 15 minutes and no more.

No makeup and push-up. 

Agnete founded the company before she was 20y/o with no experience in the field. She explained me that creating Moons and Junes was a reaction to a feeling of having placed herself in a tight corner where wearing a lot of make-up and push-up bras with too much padding was the answer to feeling sexy and good. Problem is that the use of this is always followed by an anti-climax. When washing off the make-up and taking of the bra, everything is again left to nature and gravity and your own insecurity. Isn't awful not to feel good about - you - ? She asked me and it resonated a lot within myself. 

If you asked any girl of this very visual generation about body image, 8/10's honest response would probably be that it's easy to feel less when there's so many bountiful (but not natural - no judgement tho(!)) tits around. A moment long time ago I remember realizing that I wouldn't want people to think I was tired if I wasn't wearing make-up that day, or potentially fool a man with push-up boobs, risking any disappointment because of my natural being. My attributes are supposed to be cherished as they are and absolutely not to be a disappointment I caused myself by presenting them differently.

Consumer or creator? 

When we both came to the above mentioned realization, both Agnete and I knew good old Sloggi wasn't the solution. But what Agnete did when I didn't, was to start researching, sketching and designing the products she now sells at Moons and Junes. You see, I continued to be a consumer, and she became a creator and entrepreneur and I admire everything about that.

Epic. 

Launch

After a couple of years of spending time on designing, growing a team, visiting factories around in Europe and producing prototypes, Moons & Junes finally launched this spring 2016. Comes in two different designs and in 3 different colorways. 
 

Hack

In line with the vision and motive of creating the brand, one thing I really like is that, they acknowledge that not everyone fits the standard sizes, and therefore each size is designed in different proportions in order to fit the body in the best way possible. The lingerie is simply designed to accentuate the body instead of changing it.  YES! 

Please note I was never paid or encouraged to write all of this, I am simply the biggest fan of elevating others and Agnete is doing a fantastic job. An awesome lady boss aspiring to be more than just a consumer. She did sent me lingerie and I can assure you that it fits my proportions and doesn't compromise or sacrifice comfort over beauty. 

Agnete's best advice if you want to get started yourself, is to just go ahead and start doing it. Even failure will bring you a step closer the goal. 

 

 

 
 
 
 

Agnete is currently living in New York where she is on exchange at Columbia University. Still running business back home in Denmark.  

Thanks for letting me show your face in here beautiful A.  

 
 
 
 

iPhone 6

We went to the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro

Working in Rio. 

A week before the Olympic Games Rio 2016 was about to start I got the opportunity to travel and work together with Kenneth Nguyen at a photo og video production assignment. The result should serve to transmit the experience of the Olympic Games in this dream destination. It was an absolute unique experience, and I must say that Rio as an olympic host has everything to be proud of. This I'll get into in an other post.

 

Not a beach post.

For this post I decided not to show the regular landscape pictures of the sugarloaf mountain, the christ or the beaches because really... it's easier to just google it. Instead I want to take you with me to Recreio. One of my dearest places in Rio, solely because of a special family I know there. I've already written about them on my old blog.  But let me get straight to the point.

 

One of the photo series that made me develop my heavy interest in doing reportages, visual storytelling and portraits is the visual story of my dear friend's littlesister that became a mom at the age of 16. I followed her pregnancy from week 28 till after she gave birth to Victor Zendy. It moved me that she allowed me to portray this very personal process of hers and it's this feeling I cherish the most when photographing. Trust, honesty and intimacy. 

Today Victor is almost two, the cutest thing I now, calls me tia (auntie), and loves Hulk. Check out the story here, and please be aware that the quality of the pictures are awfully compromised, which is one of the main motivators for me to start this site. 

I had one demand for this whole trip. It was to go see Radhe and Victor + the rest of the family. Here are some photos <3

 

In the age of two Zendy both gives out plenty of hugs and kisses..... and fist pumps like a real Brazilian.

_MG_2768lille.jpg

Powerwoman.

This is Radhe's grandmother and mother of many children (forgot the exact number but around 6-7?). She is somewhere in her 70'ties and runs the local restaurant. Won't start to talk about how good her food is. Last year when I was back in Brazil together with my dear friend Paulo del Valle, we also visited Recreio. At that time she was in bed with a broken leg and looked tired and awful. How soothing it was to see her with full speed and even more beautiful and colorful than ever before. 

 

Lovesquad. It wasn't Kenneth's first time in Recreio either. He visited the family on his own back in 2013 on a work trip to Rio. 

 

Nicholas

To the far left we have my great friend and cousin of Radhe, Isla.

 

Radhe.

My heart can't get over her and him.

 

The saddest part is when we have to leave again and I never know when I will see them again. Until then Fabres

So amor e saudade.  
 

 
Lookbook for GEIT COPENHAGEN
GEIT COPENHAGEN ALONA VIBE

Geit. 2016

Some months ago I did the lookbook for the new danish brand GEIT COPENHAGEN. It just had it's offical launch so I thought I would share the final result.

 

Idea.

The aim was to create a simple, natural and organic look and universe. 
It was an intense but really great day of shooting together with a loot of lovely ladies in the Botanical Garden in CPH. I remember it as the first really hot summerday, and we were sweating our asses of. The ice cream weren't actually a part of the styling plan but ended up being a prop.
Anyway, i
t's so damn lovely to see the final result. And it makes me proud of my own progress. Hope you will like it. Take a look in the bottom of the post for more info and details. 

 

Look book for GEIT Copenhagen
Photography and art direction by Alona Vibe
Make-up and hair by Mickaela Berman
Model is Fie Fenneberg at Unique models
 

See more of my work