The Faces of Beardsgaard • Fjordmist IRL

The faces of Beardsgaard series takes you inside the story and the world of each of our products ~ our real live regular clients, cut by the Beardsgaard barbers, groomed by River Peak Apothecary, and on location, often  just off the beaten path. Journey to our realm, nerds.

We often say that Beardsgaard is the D&D game to River Peak’s LARP tournament, and that is demonstrated nowhere as fully as these fantastical photo shoots we do sometimes.

So while everything is magical and polished over at River Peak Apothecary, at Beardsgaard we get down and, in this case, literally really dirty, tromping around the woods before the sun was even all the way up, because we’re crazy people, we guess.

Let us tell you the rest of the story, and get to the bottom of the post for the full video.

The Spirit of the Season

So why are we doing this again? Why are we dressing up handsome dudes and taking them to the woods? It’s all about beard oil, buds.

When we formulated our beard oils, we made them to smell like seasons of the year, because we live in a place that has them in spades. Then we need to set the scene, and for that we have two powerful tools that we have a bunch of around these parts: nature, and bearded dudes.

This shoot was for Fjordmist, Blademaiden’s favorite of the scents, smelling like misted green growing things after a rain, all of the trees in full bloom. Smells like all this looks, as we say.

The Wettening

We didn’t end up with snow for the winter, nor did we score actual mist for spring, but we did get rain. Ever so much rain.

In fact, the dry areas we had scouted not one week prior we came back to find knee deep in water in the dawn hour in which we dragged our asses out of bed (pretty sure we were all up at 4 am, on the river by 5:30).

For the first bit of the shoot we had that soft, pre-dawn blue light that gave the river a mistless mysticality, and as the dawn wore on, we got the most beautiful golden glow through the new leaves, flush with the drenching rains of the previous few days.

The Gaard & The Apothecary

We have stumbled into a style with these shoots of real world with a candy coating of fantasy on top, as opposed to straight up one or the other, Mostly it’s just an excuse to gather capes and cloaks.

You may find us sometime this summer at the Indiana Dunes with a beast of a ginger in a kilt, hefting a claymore with oiled, rippling limbs, but we digress.

The Model

This day we were out at a wee little forest preserve down the street from our shop, Blademaiden shooting for RPA, Vinc for all the behind the scenes of Beardsgaard, and joining us is a client that gives a new meaning to the Animaniacs line, “Hellooooo, nurse!”

Because he totally is one. Saving lives and stuff. That also means he is thankfully also used to waking up at ungodly hours. Although he might end up paying off school with a modeling side job, because when he released the hair from its bindings, he went full Hansel almost immediately.

Check out all the fun.

Explore more of the story over at River Peak Apothecary.