There’s a special feeling that comes with arriving somewhere late at night — when you can’t quite get a sense of where you are until the sun rises. That’s what it felt like pulling up to Maudie and Lang Clay’s house in Sumner, Mississippi — the home Maudie lovingly refers to as Grey Gardens South. It’s like a present waiting to be unwrapped in the morning.
When I arrive, they’re ready for bed. Maudie says they are normally night owls but they are tired tonight. I’ve had a long drive from Athens. I’m exhausted, yet totally wound up at the same time. Lang mentions he’ll be heading out around 5 a.m. to chase a sunrise he’s been thinking about. There is a bridge that he has been photographing with his 4x5 view camera, and he needs early morning light. Maudie says that she “will show her face around 9 a.m.” Her Mississippi cadence makes me feel woozy. If she would, I would have her read me to sleep at night.
The three of us have met before. We’re all photographers whose work is represented by Jackson Fine Art in Atlanta. Earlier this year, we were chatting at a JFA opening for their friend Sally Mann and our conversation turned to fashion. Though the couple moved back to Sumner shortly after their first child, daughter Anna, was born in 1986, they met and lived together in New York City for more than a decade — an experience which fed Maudie’s passion for couture, inherited from her mother, who was once a hat model for Hattie Carnegie. Maudie relishes talking about designers and the pieces she has collected through the years as the couple’s projects have taken them to Paris, Barcelona, Marseille, London, and other major cities. We remarked how Southern artists were exploding on the international fashion scene (as we spoke, Marietta, Georgia, native Tyler Mitchell was photographing the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s spring exhibition, “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style”).
Then it hit me. How cool would it be to bring together some of our region’s stylish creatives — from established stars like Billy Reid to young innovators like textile designer Shana Jackson — for a fashion shoot? Better yet, the Clays could be our models, in their own historic home. They loved the idea, too.
