Iluka Cindi
September 2026

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Why I Flew to Italy and Greece to Shoot My Brand (And Why It Was the Best Decision I Made)

There is a specific kind of quiet that exists on the shores of Lake Como.

The kind that makes you stop whatever you are doing and simply stand there. The water. The mountains. The light arriving slowly over the edge of the hills and landing on everything it touches.

 

I had booked this trip as a holiday. A proper one. The kind I had been promising myself for longer than I care to admit. And then I was sitting there, looking at images of Lake Como and other places I have always dreamt about going too and I thought: there is no way I am not going to make the most of this.

 

That was the moment a holiday became something more. Not instead of. In addition to. 

 

 

Why Italy. Why These Places Specifically.

I want to be honest about why I chose Italy and Greece, because it was not purely strategic.

 

I chose them because I had always wanted to go.

The strategy arrived second, and it arrived quickly, because once I started thinking about the Iluka and the Marli in those settings, the case built itself. 

The warm stone of Lake Como. The cypress-lined hills of Tuscany. The vertical drama of the Amalfi Coast. 

The white and blue geometry of Santorini. These are not generic beautiful backdrops. They are places with a specific visual language. Considered. Timeless. Effortlessly refined.

That is also the language of this brand.

The woman Hustle & Grace was built for does not live in a studio. She moves through the world with intention. She has been in the airport lounge and the boardroom and the long dinner that runs past midnight. 

 

She has carried a beautiful bag through places that deserved one. Italy and Greece are exactly where she would take the Iluka. So that is where I took it.

The personal and the professional did not compete here. They pointed in the same direction.


“Hustle & Grace is redefining what modern women carry — merging clarity, structure, and elegance in one intentional system.”
- Women’s Reporter

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Planning a Shoot From the Other Side of the World

Here is what nobody tells you about planning a location shoot in Europe from Australia.

It is a project. A full, demanding, consuming project that sits alongside the actual running of your business and your life, and it does not get easier just because the destination is beautiful.

 

I started reaching out to photographers across Italy and Greece months before I flew out. Instagram. Directories. Referrals from other Australian founders who had done location shoots in Europe. I sent enquiries I was proud of: clear brief, specific references, reasonable budget, detailed timeline.

The response rate was not what I had hoped for.

 

Some photographers did not reply at all. Some replied in Italian only, which meant I was sitting at my desk on the Gold Coast, copying text into a translation app and claude doing my best to interpret what I think was either a booking confirmation or a very polite decline. The back and forth across languages, time zones, and currencies was its own job.

 

Finding a model followed the same pattern. Agencies had minimum booking requirements I could not meet at that stage. Individual models I found through local Instagram searches replied in Italian or Greek, or replied in English and then switched back mid-thread, and I was left working out from context whether we had an agreement or not.

And then I found Sean and Chiara.

Sean was the photographer I hired for the shoot. He understood the brief from the first conversation and spoke about ideas and places that never even occurred to me in a way that told me immediately he was the right person. 

 

After months of messages that went nowhere, finding him felt like a door opening. Chiara was our model. From our first exchange I could tell she understood what we were building. She brought something to the work that I had not known to ask for until I saw it.

The lesson of the planning process: the difficulty is not a sign you are doing it wrong. It is the cost of doing it properly. Keep going until the right people are in.

See the Iluka Colection here


Lake Como. Arriving Somewhere You Have Only Ever Imagined.

There is a specific feeling that comes from arriving somewhere you have only ever seen in photographs.

Lake Como was everything I had imagined and then, immediately, more. The water. The mountains behind it. The mist sitting low in the early morning in layers that shifted as the light changed. The cobble stone .... I had built this place in my mind across years of looking at images and reading about it and wanting to be there. 

Standing there in person, I understood that imagination is always slightly smaller than the real thing.

We set up our first shoot in a narrow side street near the waterfront that Sean had scouted. The Iluka in Midnight against the iron detail of a lakeside gate.

Chiara moved through those streets like she had always belonged in them. 

 The shots from that morning are some of my favourites from the entire campaign.

I had built this place in my mind at home on the Gold Coast. The real thing was so much better.


“As a Director of a large corporation, That is Public facing I look for women who women who are aware of how organisation can play out their day.”
— Onya Magazine - Lisa Hayes

The Amalfi Coast. Nothing Prepares You For the Scale of It.

I thought I knew what the Amalfi Coast looked like.

I did not. Photographs do not capture how vertical it is. How everything is stacked and dramatic and built into cliff faces in a way that should not work and absolutely does. Standing on the Amalfi Coast for the first time you realise that every photograph you have seen has been doing it a disservice.

We climbed a staircase at 7am to get a shot before the crowds arrived. We set up on a restaurant terrace with the coastline behind us. We found a Positano wall that was exactly the colour combination I had been imagining from Australia and shot the Charcoal Iluka against it.

It was also genuinely fun. I want to say that because I think people imagine these shoots as purely stressful logistical exercises. There were stressful moments. There were also moments where I was standing somewhere extraordinarily beautiful, doing work I love, with people I had come to trust completely, and I was just happy. Fully, simply happy.

The Amalfi Coast gave me both. I would not trade either.

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“A new Australian lifestyle brand built for hybrid women who juggle work, travel, and life with style.”
— Australian Giftguide

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Santorini. The Last Stop. The One That Became the Campaign.

Santorini was the final location and it delivered in a way that I could not have scripted.

Having Sean locked in from months of planning meant the logistics were manageable in a place that gets very busy very fast. He knew the spots and the timing. We knew what we were going for. Chiara in Santorini was the image I had been working toward without fully knowing it when I was sitting at home imagining all of this.

The Marli in Mulberry against the white and blue of an Oia staircase. The Iluka on a terrace above the caldera. Two hours of shooting in the late afternoon that became the campaign.

I flew home thinking: that was the right decision.

 


“A new Australian lifestyle brand built for hybrid women who juggle work, travel, and life with style.”
— Australian Giftguide

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What Happened When I Started Sharing It

The response was overwhelming. Genuinely overwhelming, in a way I had not anticipated.

Women who had been to Lake Como wrote to say the images made them feel something. Women who had never been wrote to say the images made them want to go. Buyers who had been watching the brand reached out after seeing the campaign imagery. Wholesale enquiries came in. The content performed in a way that studio imagery had not.

I think what happened is this: when you photograph something in the real world, in real places, it stops looking like a product and starts looking like a life. And the woman buying from Hustle & Grace is not buying a product. She is buying into a way of moving through the world.

The images from Italy and Greece said that better than anything I could have written.

That content is still performing now. Months later. That is what I wanted.

Would I Do It Again

Without question. Immediately.

The planning was hard. The language barrier was real. The months of emails from my desk that mostly went nowhere were exhausting. There were moments where I genuinely wondered if it was all going to come together.

It came together. And then some.

The places exceeded what I had imagined. The people delivered more than I had known to ask for. The content has been some of the best-performing work I have done for this brand. And I arrived back in Australia with a clarity about what Hustle & Grace is and where it belongs that I could not have bought any other way.

I had built the whole thing in my mind first, from home, from the Gold Coast. The real thing was better.

I am already thinking about where we go next.

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