Last November in New York City I nervously took a huge meeting with the incredible Bloomingdales AQUA team. Fast forward to today, I have my own capsule collection with AQUA. PINCH ME.

AQUA is a young, fun and trendy division of Bloomingdales that houses styles that I drool over daily. To get to co-create a capsule collection with them requires non-stop pinch-mes until I realize I’m not dreaming.

This collection is a mixture of my go-to styles, cuts and prints I tend to throw on in sunny destinations as well as fun, Spring-inspired styles with a sprinkle of summer and a hint of festival in there, too. I wanted the collection to not only mirror my warm weather style, but also resonate with girls who want something fun and summery but approachable to wear.

Beyond getting to sit down with the entire AQUA team at Bloomingdales to co-design and curate a collection that I loved WITH MY NAME ON IT, I also got full creative control over shooting the look book and website imagery… that meant capturing the final pieces out in the world however I imagined them best showcased.

Zack and I got to do what we LOVE doing most. We dreamt up a vision for how we could bring this collection to life with imagery and video, and then we went out there and did just that.

Zack’s Dad has spent the past year and a half restoring a 1977 Volkswagen Westfalia Camper Van that’s been in his family for over 20 years, before which they imported straight from Germany. We named her “Lucky”, by the way. After sitting dormant in a garage for years, she’s been fully revived and restored. With a brand new engine and almost all her original parts polished off or sourced and replaced, she was officially reborn and ready to roll (aside from a minor lack-of-registration issue)… and all that happened to coincide with our shoot for my AQUA collection.

After putting in our time at the DMV to get her registered to drive, we took her on her debut cruise down to Palm Springs for two days and two gigabytes of memory card magic.

Well before we embarked for the desert, I knew exactly what property I envisioned my collection being photographed around. A quaint little Mediterranean oasis tucked behind the Palm Spring’s canyons by the name of Korakia Pensione.

*Throughout this entire blog post, if you click on any look book image, the shopping link to the clothing I am wearing will open in a new tab! WOOHOO!

You’ve probably seen this dreamy bed & breakfast style hotel while scrolling Instagram and Pinterest – and let me tell you, it’s truly as charming as the photos make it seem. With a variety of unique rooms, ranging from cute little European-style suites complete with vinyl record players and kitchenettes, to larger Mediterranean or Moroccan inspired villas – Korakia is a Palm Springs property like no other you’ll find in the area.

Below are some images we captured on Korakia property for my collection with Bloomingdales. Magic.

From the iconic palm tree lined Canyon views, bocce-ball in the courtyard, a little outdoor theatre playing vintage flicks to a pool lined with fire pits, based on it’s description alone Korakia really stole my heart before I even arrived. And just as I’d imagined, it served as the most fitting backdrop to shoot so many of the looks I styled for my AQUA collection look book.

I want to throw in a huge thank you to Korakia and the wonderful staff here for being so warm, welcoming and accommodating as we ran around the property with a slew of cameras and a flurry of a zillion outfit changes. Oh, and honorable mention to the insane home-cooked daily breakfasts.

When we weren’t shooting behind every perfect nook and cranny that makes up Korakia, we spent the rest of our time driving “Lucky” (the VW Bus) around the desert and stopping along the way to capture the rest of the look book.

And hey, I think it turned out pretty great, but I’ll let the photos we took speak for themselves. Get ready to scroll, cause there are a lot. But make sure you scroll all the way to the end of this post for links to shop all the pieces in my AQUA Bloomingdales collection!

Shop the full Helen Owen x AQUA collection below!

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