Happy Halloween! In honor of the spooky holiday my dear friends Ale Vidal, Stephanie Neiheisel and I decided to create a shoot around the idea of smoke and shadows featuring this to DIE for dress by Fame & Partners.

The most glamorous ghoul of them all is a vampire. They are always depicted as wealthy - living in castles, wearing intricate jewelry and sporting bad ass black hair. With the golden details of this unique top over a slim, satin black dress - Stephanie portrayed a vampire living among the smoke and shadows of darkness.

Rarely as a stylist and art director do I get to be theatrical with my concepts. Instead it's always creating to sell something or someone. In some ways what I do with commercial styling can be see more as smoke and mirrors over something like this. Obviously, thought and planning went into the concept, outfit and makeup for this shoot. Sometimes with "lifestyle" shoots they can appear "effortless," but in reality they are just the same amount of effort - sometimes it's even MORE planning. Doing that as a profession day in and day out can take a tole on your perception of reality causing high expectations of myself and for others.

The world of content creation and Pinterest is a world of smoke and mirrors. Though a lot of the imagery can be achieved on your own much of it can't. My advice is to always remember that a lot of the content is purely inspirational and creates a dream world like television. Take it with a grain of salt. Don't let it kill you! (mwahahahahaaa). But seriously...don't let it suck the life out of you like a vampire.