By Brad Goins
As the deadline for Lagniappe’s 21st annual Best of Southwest Louisiana approached, Lake Charles photographer Lindsey Janies was given the assignment of photographing a modernized version of Jeannie — the magical pixie who popped out of a genie’s bottle in the 1960s sitcom. This new Jeannie would be the official representative of Lagniappe’s Best Of competition.
Lindsey Janies
Back in 1965, I Dream of Jeannie starred Barbara Eden as the blonde-haired vixen who more closely resembled a commercial model than a mysterious figure of the East.
In her efforts to photograph a 2014 version of Jeannie, Janies started off one step ahead of the game; she had the one and only prop that was important. Her mother already owned “a unique glass bottle that’s a genie bottle.”
For the final photographs, a touch of smoke was added to the mouth of the bottle by Photoshop, and that crucial part of the photograph was finished.
For the Best Of images, Janies wanted an atmosphere more complex than that of I Dream of Jeannie; one thing she did to achieve this was to bring in a fog machine. Of the fog that appears in the shots, she says, “You can’t miss it. It’s such a neat and beautiful effect.” On the cover shot for this magazine, one can clearly see a band of fog floating around the model’s legs.
An Exotic Look
Janies went looking for a model who’d offer an alternative to the all-American blonde look of Barbara Eden. She thought of Mandy Broussard. Broussard was local, and Janies wanted to work with a local model. But she also wanted one with an “exotic look.”
“We wanted someone who had olive skin; dark, dramatic hair and strong eyes,” says Janies. She had in mind a combination of the old Jeannie and the more recent, and more exotic, Jasmine in Aladdin. “That way it would look like we weren’t going right off I Dream of Jeannie.”
The photography project was, says Janies, “a joint effort,” with part of the contribution coming from Lagniappe co-publisher Greg Pavlovich, who provided a template with a photograph of an exotic costume.
The last big part of the effort came into play when Janies learned that her model’s mother, Sue Broussard, was a professional seamstress. (Her daughter calls her a “seamstress extraordinaire.”) Janies gave mother and daughter a description of a costume and “they ran with it.”
It’s The Details That Are Special
Along with Mandy’s exotic look, this specially made costume would create a figure who looked far different from Jeannie. But just what was so special about the costume?
“The key elements are always in the details,” says Janies. She noted the costume’s see-through arm pieces as well as a similar piece that runs from ear to ear over the nose — “like a veil from the nose down.”
The level of detail in general made an impression on Janies. She noted, for instance, the presence of a second layer of cloth over the pantaloons. The costume “was so much more intricate than anything we would ever have expected.” It certainly was vastly more detailed and complex than anything that could have been had at a costume store. Had it been commissioned, says Janies, it would have cost “hundreds to create.”
Sue Broussard expertly created the “Jeannie” costume from scratch
The best part of the project, says Janies, was that the model and her seamstress mother “took their parts and went with it,” and in the end, produced “gorgeous work.” Mandy called her mother’s costume a work of “creative genius.”
For mother Sue, the challenge of creating a one-of-a-kind costume was nothing new.
First, she had an extensive background in sewing and tailoring in general. “I’ve always made Mandy’s clothes,” she says. Furthermore, she says, she made all her husband’s shirts for 40 years.
“I was always a seamstress,” says Sue. Mandy grew up knowing “Mamma always sews.”
And then, she was accustomed to collaborating with her daughter when it came to creating the latter’s costumes.
“She [Mandy] more or less designed things in her mind.” She then related her ideas to her mother, and then the two sat down and worked out a sketch of the new design. It was a process they’d gone through over and over.
This time, mother and daughter reworked the costume worn by Barbara Eden half a century earlier and made an entirely new design right for the time. Says Sue, “We call that making it your own … Couture.”
Lensi White and Kacie Guilbeaux of Signatures Salon creating the perfect hairstyle
In terms of work, the biggest challenge Sue had to overcome was that of the beadwork. First, she couldn’t locate the beads she needed in town, and “didn’t have a whole lot of time.”
Sue chose to make the medallions she wanted for the new costume by hand-sewing many, many beads to the cloth. “I hand-beaded it to make it look like tiny medallions.”
The medallions — which looked like quarter-sized beads — were hand-crafted by Sue, who sewed 25 small beads together to make each medallion.
Connecting the medallions are exotic design motifs that look like different things to different viewers. (Sue says some people see them as arrows; some as leaves.) These too were made with the hand-sewing of beads. “It was done one bead at a time,” Sue says.
This detail work was also nothing new for Sue. She said she has often worked with “seed beads,” which she says are literally the size of seeds. She recalls a dress she once made onto which she sewed enough seed beads to fill a large cereal bowl.
As a final distinction from the original design, she added a large amount of fringe to accentuate the midriff.
‘Creating New Stuff’
Mandy Broussard chose her own jewelry and did her own make-up. “It was fun,” says Mandy, who does make-up jobs on the side — for instance, matching make-up with wedding gowns, costumes and so forth.
For this job, she also handled the jewelry, seeking out gold jewelry that she felt would correspond to the Jasmine mystique.
With one day’s notice, Lensi White and Kacie Guilbeaux of Signatures Salon were given the task of creating for Mandy the sort of hairstyle that might be worn by a professional Turkish belly dancer.
In spite of the short notice, the two stylists were highly motivated about the job.
“We were trying to do a Jeannie that wasn’t too old school,” says White. “We like challenges. We love getting out of the box and creating new stuff.” She says patrons in the shop were looking at the evolving style “and trying to figure it out.”
To create the desired effect, the two decided to put a knot on the very top of the hairdo, and then slick the hair back behind the knot.
It was a somewhat time-intensive procedure, since one objective was to make this exotic model appear to have a great deal of hair. “She had a lot of hair [anyway],” says White. “But for this style, she probably needed 10 times as much as she had.” The two hairdressers eventually turned to the use of extensions to create the look of especially long and dense hair.
A Very Simple Set
Although the choice of model had been careful and the creation of the costume was elaborate, the set Janies put together was simplicity itself. It was simply a matter of putting the genie bottle in the appropriate place in Janies’ basic studio.
The combination of complex planning and simple execution meant that the entire photo session was completed within an hour.
Mandy had modeled for Janies before, and found that the two “had good chemistry.” This continued to be the case during the novel Best Of session.
Mandy seems to be speaking for all parties involved when she says, “Pretty much the whole thing was fun.”
2014 “Best Of” certificates feature this dramatic image of Mandy as Jeannie
In addition to the photos on this issue’s cover and in the Best Of pages, Mandy’s image will continue to be seen around town, as she will appear on the Best Of certificates that will begin to pop up around town in coming weeks.
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