The Women of Woodcock

The Women of Woodcock is the companion photo book to the just released award-nominated film Phantom Thread, from the auteur director Paul Thomas Anderson. Starring the Oscar-winning actor Daniel Day Lewis in his last role, as Reynolds Woodcock, the film portrays an uncompromising fashion couturier in 1950s London — and the women that surrounded him: clients that included royalty, society debutantes, and heiresses, as well as his sister who runs the fashions house, the seamstresses, and his mistresses. Gaining full access to backstage and on set, the English photographer Laura Hynd documented the fictional House of Woodcock: Hynd and her camera moved fluidly back and forth between costume fittings, the set, epic crowd scenes, extras, and classic portrait sessions. With insider access Hynd explored the fictional couturier with a specifically female gaze. Through her camera, all the women in the House of Woodcock, from royalty to atelier staff, are celebrated equally — a deliberate concept supported and highlighted by the inclusion of handful carefully selected frames from the movie. The Women of Woodcock is stunning, artful, and unexpected — much like Phantom Thread itself.