The Faces of Beardsgaard • Spiritbrook IRL {Video}

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.

Photos: Left: Natalie Anderson / Right: Jim Richards

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 many cases, pretty dirty. Or at least Blademaiden did this time, skittering up trees and tossing herself in the dirt at every opportunity to get the good angles with the camera.

Photos: Lindsey Roussel

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

Why are we taking bearded fellas into the woods and shooting them? It’s all about the beard, friends. Our very own River Peak Apothecary beard oils, balms and waxes, that is.

We have a scent for every season – Fjordmist for spring, Dragonsea for summer (coming up next), Hearthstone for autumn and Frostwood for winter. So WTF season is Spiritbrook?

Photos: Natalie Anderson

There are four seasons (which we have in spades here in the midwest) and four elements, but in many magical fandom canons (notably the Wheel of Time, and many others) there are in fact five elements – earth, air, fire, water, and spirit. We’re sure you can see where we’re going with this.

Spiritbrook is created for fellas with sensitive skin, made with small amount of gentle, calming Blue Tansy essential oil, smelling like a breath of herbal freshness, then it’s gone. If your skin turns pink when you touch it, this is your blend.

But just because a blend is gentle, doesn’t mean the gents who wear it are.

The Gaard & The Apothecary

While our recent photo shoots have been of a slightly more fantastical variety, this blend has a bit of cheekiness to it. In the Spiritbrook mythology, we introduce Kevin, the only creature in the realm whose name is not derived from proper Sindarin Elvish – a gerbil with an accidental infusion of god-like powers, rainbow wings, and a lust for world domination.

For the real world photo shoot, we translated that into a grown up Calvin of Calvin & Hobbes vibe, a bearded beast made of mischief running about in the woods and climbing trees, as you do.

Photos: Left: Lindsey Roussel / Right: Natalie Anderson

The Model

We had a couple of choices for the perfect model for this shoot (as always, not an actual model, just someone who was willing to let us dress him up and take pictures of him). Andy here was an ideal choice, because that full sleeve of rainbow Zelda tattoos was about as rainbow flying gerbil as you’re going to find in a human.

Photos: Natalie Anderson

Because we don’t use actual models, our models never quite know what to expect when they agree to participate in these photo shoots.

Photos: Lindsey Roussel

Well, for any future fellows we tap for these photo shoots, here’s the low down. You will likely be changing clothes outdoors at some point. Things will get physical. You will get sweaty and kind of filthy while we towel you off on occasion. You will likely feel weirdly objectified but in a low-key way.

Photos: Left: Jim Richards / Right: Vinc Cintron

Someone nearby will always doing their best to make you break (which does tend to produce the best photos). Other than that, just kind of exist in your surroundings and do your best to make sure you have some light uncomfortably hitting your eyes. We do the rest.

Photo: Jim Richards

The Crew

For the first of these shoots, Hearthstone, it was just Blademaiden and the model out in the canyons of Starved Rock. Frostwood brought with it second and third shooters for behind the scenes footage/video. This time we had a small army with us, because the more the merrier.