IMG Originals Presents Grace and Cassady Clover At Home Over FaceTime

Will IMG models Grace and Cassady Clover be Britain’s answer to the Hadid sisters? British Vogue featured Alice Newbold’s interview with Grace Clover after she made her catwalk debut as an exclusive for the JW Anderson fall/winter 2020 show.

The Clover sisters come to editorial life, styled by Glenn Valentine, then lensed by Xavier Avery as an IMG Original presentation. I really like it.

Valentine describes the FaceTime shoot:

“Another fun and collective effort as an agency to style, shoot, and art direct an entire mini editorial over FaceTime with rising stars and sisters, Grace & Cassady Clover, using whatever we could find around their house!”

For AOC, there are technical aspects of the IMG Originals presentation worth calling out.

As a high aesthetic website, I do not like the 2 images together magazine presentation scanned for Models.com. Nor do we like total redundancy in side-by-images, where only a minor change happens in the second image — arm up vs arm down.

Personally, I prefer a couple more single-image horizontals in this set. But that preference is outweighed by the excellence of the side-by-side images being complementary and not mere duplicates. The result is a cohesive visual statement.

This visual IMG Originals presentation breaks through my general refusal to use 800-1000 px with a white gutter down the middle presentation. I hate it. When we create widgets with multiple large images together, we set no inner margin. With IMG Originals making the same presentation here, we are in good company.

Please take note, dear photographers, of this excellent compromise visual presentation that brings AOC and IMG into a place of happy coexistence and harmony. We want to support young talent with exposure and especially now, in our new world. But I refuse to trash AOC in the process, so please listen up if you want to be on AOC and follow IMG’s lead.

There are other formats that also make a high-aesthetic statement. But do not scan magazine pages with two floating images on a page, post them on Models.com and expect them to end up on AOC. It won’t happen.

You must craft your work, and —yes, it can be a labor of love in today’s world. But we’re all in the same boat, and you can do it if you try. I would know.

Wishing the Clover sisters good success and thanks IMG Originals for raising the bar on how we present our best selves. In a world where professional survival (not us, we’re good to go) and food on the table is a matter of significant concern for talented people, the pursuit of creative excellence must rule.

Mother Nature prunes most living things, left to her own inherent priorities around survival of species. It’s tragic but true, and we are now living in one of those moments. ~ Anne