You’ve got to put the work in for the #flyingdress fashion trend.
The key to capturing the picture-perfect flying dress photo is muscles and momentum, not Photoshop.
The lavish pictures may even assistants to billow out the 10-foot-long gown, while the subject power walks to achieve the flowy train seen around social media.
It also needs everyone to pay attention to the weather.
“What I have to keep in mind is, don’t go against the wind because it’s going to blow the other way,” Leo Cabrera, 36, who runs a New York City photography company that specializes in the photoshoots with subject wearing the voluminous gowns with flowy trains in picture-perfect vacation destinations.
Cabrera typically operates as a one-man show using a tripod for his camera, creating a windswept wave effect with the gown’s trains as he coaches his subjects on how to pose.
But on occasion, he’ll have two assistants at the ready.
“In the beginning we tried many different things – throwing the dress up in the air, grabbing it and letting it go and shaking the fabric to get the movement in the photo,” Cabrera, who typically shoots in Brooklyn’s Dumbo neighborhood, around Central Park and in destinations like Dubai and the Dominican Republic.
Because of the labor-intensive nature of the shoot, Cabrera says he only books two per day – with rates starting at $400 for a one hour shoot and a dress rental — and has already done 100 in the last year.
“You have to be ready for that moment and grab the dress to get it flowing — that’s the hardest part. If I don’t get the shot I want, I have to repeat the movements shaking the fabric. My arms get tired,” he told The Post.
Initially, Cabrera thought the key to achieving the perfectly airy angle would be having the subject run fast in the dress – but when clients began tripping over the lengthy trains he reassessed.
“If you run, it’s going to make a mess with the fabric and you can fall down – it’s more about just walking fast and me shaking the dress with both hands to get the perfect shot,” he said of his rhythmic creative direction.
The flying dress photo has become an unassuming bucket list item for travelers to check off their list in vacation destinations in places like the Greek islands, Dubai, Cappadocia in Turkey and on jaunts around Brooklyn’s scenic Dumbo neighborhood, among others.
The hashtag #FlyingDress has 52.6 million views on TikTok, and photographers in some of the most sought-after vacation destinations are cashing in on the trend.
A more photographers are cashing in on the trend.
The company Flying Dress photo has a package for around $1,680 that includes transportation to and from the shoot, hair and makeup, dress, a two-hour shoot, editing, retouching and ownership of the photo rights and video.
And the glamor shot doubles as a digital postcard of sorts for travelers to post and boast about on social media.
Indeed, when Georgia-based travel agent and content creator Adriannea Smith booked a Santorini-bound cruise specifically with a flying dress photo shoot in mind, posing in the canary yellow dress, she said, was harder than it looked.
“The gown is so heavy the wind is blowing and you’re trying to hold still,” Smith recalled to the Post.
“The assistant is holding onto the end of your dress, then the photographer counts down and the assistant will throw the dress a certain way. It depends how the wind is moving as the photographer directs them,” she explained, noting that she comically had to hobble over hot cobble stones for the sizzling summer shoot typically done barefoot.
She said the shoot was worth every penny – helping her promote her business via her Instagram @StandByAdrie posting a reel to the tune of 20,000 views and upwards of 480 likes on Instagram.
Having a bit of a Cinderella moment was priceless, she said.
“I felt like a super model,” she told The Post.
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