Off to France to shoot the Autumn-Winter 2010 catalogue collection, but flights may be disrupted by volcanic ash drifting in from Iceland – People Tree against the volcano! Unfortunately we cannot change the schedule, as reorganising would put us weeks behind for producing the catalogue. We are looking into trains and van hire.

Preparation for this shoot has included all the work of designing and selecting an exciting and inspiring collection of beautiful clothes – we started all that in June 2009. Then we have worked with our producer groups to create the samples and have adjusted them for fit. Next they go into production, as they have to start to be packed into packages and boxes into containers and onto ships soon if they are to reach UK in time for shops and our mail and internet order warehouse.

I love taking the photos myself, but I am taking a great photographer colleague Jonathan Rose as assistant, also son Jerome as helper and Laura who puts together our catalogues. We have three models, two wonderful beautiful girls who love what People Tree is doing, and a cool-looking guy. We stay in a friend’s house, which means we cut costs, and we have to choose locations and an environment that mean the clothes look just right when you get the catalogues in early September. We cart along huge piles of clothes in a lot of suitcases, it will be hard work if we have to divert onto the trains. Blast the volcano!

Wish us luck with our travels and what promises to be a gruelling week of 5am starts to catch the best light, which normally gives me a real chance to see People Tree clothes in action in all sorts of situations and on models as wonderful as our customers. It is a great chance to see where the designs for our clothes are going, and how we can work even better to put our producers’ traditional skills and hard work to better use, so that People Tree stays at the cutting edge of beautiful fashion, despite erupting volcanoes.