July 15, 2025

Pt. 1 The Castle - Sky Full Of Song BTS

Hello loves!

If you’re an avid scroller of our website here at All About Audrey, or our social media pages, you may have noticed we’ve recently launched one of our favourite collections to date, A Sky Full Of Song (yes, we do have many Florence + The Machine fans in our office).

It’s a whimsical, romantic summer daydream of a collection dowsed in intricate lace, flowy silhouettes and a soft feminine palette.

Whenever we have a new upcoming collection that we’re particularly excited by, we make sure to arrange a big photo-shoot day for the pieces, to truly do the clothing justice.

When brainstorming a location for the shoot for this particular group of pieces, there was only one real option; it simply had to be Arundel. My manager Dom and I had both grown up near the town, and knew it intimately - for its glorious countryside quaint-ness, its extensive history, and, of course, the castle!

If you have never visited the town before, take my word for it when I say that Arundel Castle is utterly staggering; all 40 acres of it have been exquisitely preserved and refurbished since its creation in the 11th century, and it is a jaw-dropping reminder of how much of a history we have at our fingertips here in England.

It’s not only the castle that drew us to Arundel, though. If you haven’t been there, you may be unfamiliar with another stand-out landmark, Swanbourne Lake. It’s a delightful, relatively small fresh-water lake just on the outskirts of the town, surrounded by glorious countryside walks, and the opportunity to take row-boats out on your own for a romantic afternoon in the sunshine.

We had visions of our new fairytale-inspired collection being best showcased on one of these boats, in the centre of an idyllic lake set in the rural English countryside.

So, now that we had the vision of what the photos should look like, the only question left was “who?”

If you’ve been around for a while and have seen the photographs from the day, you may have recognised the stunning Laura from some of our previous shoots, as she has been a decade long friend of Audrey, and looks like a dream in our clothing.

We knew her long luscious locks of hair and graceful frame would make her the perfect muse for this ethereal collection, and with Tallulah and I being avid enjoyers of photography, we were set.

As with most other shoots we have done in the past, we met early in the morning at our shop in the North Laines, and packed all of our various planned outfits into bags to haul with us all the way to Arundel in Tallulah’s car.

The hidden hero of this shoot day was our manager, Dom, who you can see packing and organising the clothes. This entire photoshoot was truly his baby; his creative vision, and so although we sadly had to leave him behind in the office, his contribution to the day and to the outcome of the photos should not go unacknowledged.

After an hour-long drive of chatting and giggling, we finally arrived in Arundel, and knew the first stop before anything simply had to be caffeine. Whilst very fun and incredibly rewarding, photoshoot days can often be very long and slightly exhausting, so we promptly fuelled up on coffee at the delicious Tarrant Street Espresso - a personal favourite and recommendation of mine.

So, three oat iced-latte’s (and one croissant) in tow, we made our way to the castle.

We had already pre-planned that we would shoot four specific pieces in the grounds - our Darcy Maxi Meadow Dress in Rose Trellis Pink, the Venus Wrap Top in Parchment Cream Lace, the Venus Sheer Maxi Dress in Muse Pink Floral, and finally, the timeless Elizabeth Button-Up Maxi in Diary White Lace. We knew of all the clothes, these pieces would be best portrayed in the celestial, history-drenched backdrop of the castle.

We ventured deep into the castle gardens, and began with the Darcy Dress and Venus Top, paired together to create a hauntingly beautiful vision of elegance. These are some of my personal favourite photos, and feel they truly showcase the delicate opulence of the cream lace in these shady, moody shots.

After a subtle quick-change under the human-umbrella of Tallulah and I, we moved onto a new part of the expansive grounds to shoot the Venus Sheer Dress.

As you can see in the pictures, we found a stunning spot next to some freshly bloomed summer hydrangeas, and got to work.

As you can also see, we had to of course take the time to stop and take our own personal pictures of the flowers - they’re some of my absolute favourites and created a truly romantic scene for such an equally whimsical dress.

Our final outfit was the timeless piece, the Elizabeth Dress.

We took pictures in multiple different spots for this, Tallulah and I looking like absolute mad women, lying on the ground, trying to get the perfect shot with the castle in the background. I think we managed to get exactly what we were looking for, so the grass stains were worth it!

From memory, I think we must have spent no more than two hours in the castle grounds, and it was so worth it. Around every corner was a stunning new vista, all of us remarking that this incredible setting was a ‘photographer’s dream come true’.

It was a very successful morning, and after stopping for some delicious, freshly-made baguettes for lunch, we prepared to move onto our next location - the lake.

If you’d like to hear all about that, and how the universe worked against us on that fateful sunny afternoon at Swanbourne Lake, you’ll have to tune in to part two.