FEMALE NARRATIVES
CAPTURED ON HAMPSTEAD HEATH BY INDIA HARTFORD-DAVIS
As the sun set on Hampstead Heath on the hottest day of the year, India Hartford-Davis captured a magical moment for YOLKE. Together we put the spotlight on Tijana Tamburic and Franzi Klein of Female Narratives - an integrated creative agency connecting brands to real women and real stories.
Being an all-woman brand, YOLKE celebrates the magic of female-led collaborations with the launch of SS'20 RTW Collection featuring the duo behind the Female Narratives.
Photos by India Hartford-Davis
How did you two girls meet?
On a flight to Ibiza in 2016!
What is Female Narratives and how did it come about?
Female Narratives is an all female collective + creative agency. The idea of FN has been a marriage between wanting to make a change to an inauthentic advertising industry by founding our own creative agency - with our own set of rules - and already having a great network of really amazing, talented women. Both coming from the modelling world we were at a point in our lives where we felt like things needed to change - by rewriting the narrative of what advertising and the process of creating content can look like.
Every time we meet up with you girls you are working on some fun project. Last time you were sourcing Santa suits for shoot! What are you working on now?
Oh God, that Santa suit!! That film project actually turned out great! Right now we are working on two press films for Mother’s Day that we are really excited about as they cover a much more inclusive understanding of the motherhood journey. We are also working on several events happening in March as International Women’s day also marks our 3 year anniversary so it’s always a busy and celebratory time of year for us.
You have so any amazing females as part of your collective. How do you find them or do they find you?
It started as women in our friendships circles, or women whose work we had seen and admired and we just slid into their DMs, but now it happens more frequently that women reach out to us and want to get involved - which is really beautiful.It’s meant that our small collective has actually turned into a large network that is kept informed via our newsletter.
Is there anything that jumps out at you when you are looking at a brief and you know it will be an exciting job?
When we are given lee-way to tell an important, whole, true story. We love to work with clients who understand what we offer, and so give us their goals and hopes for the campaign and what they want to achieve, rather than telling us how to tell the story. But there does have to be something meaningful for us to latch on to - we want to create things that have purpose so if a brand offers and interesting starting point that we can then journey from; that’s a great place to start.
What are some difficulties you have come across when starting a brand?
It’s a wild ride starting your own business and it’s been a steep learning curve for both of us! I guess in our first year or so we had to really prove that we are here to stay and are determined to make an impact and not just an idea we had that then fizzled out - but being 3 years in and looking back at what we have achieve I think we got there! Running your own business is so much more than what you can see on the surface level. There is a lot of admin such as dealing with accounting and insurance behind all the fun stuff you can see us doing.
Cobalt Blue and White Stripped Set
£145
Dakota Meadow Juno Slip
£165
What would you say is FN’s biggest accomplishment to date?
Building this powerful and beautiful female-centred community of creatives that we have the honour and privilege of being able to work with all year long and finding clients that trust us to creatively tell stories for them.We are particularly proud of the Find Them On Bumble Bizz campaign which you might have seen on the tube, buses and billboards all over London last year!
Tijana, you are a storyteller, tell us how you started and how it lead to you speaking at Ted Talk?
I remember being sat with my grandfather who would tell me stories about his life in the 30s and 40s, they sounded made up to me until I studied history at GCSE and then at A-level. I realised his stories fit into a much larger context of war and politics that I was learning about. I couldn’t believe the stories he was telling me so I started taking notes while we spoke, and then frantically typed them out, trying to get all my memory of his words down. It became this life-long side project to write his biography, or a novelised version of it, so I did it in tandem with anything else I was doing. This spilled over into writing in all other forms. I studied history at university so that I could learn more about his, and my, country’s past and that degree taught me a lot about how to structure my thoughts and ideas. I started writing articles for magazines and when the wind takes me, I still do.When my grandfather passed away in February 2017 I found I couldn’t bring myself to write his story. It became too big a task and the pressure to do it justice was overwhelming. But I found a new world for my words where I finally felt they belongs - telling stories for brands.I suppose the ultimate honour was being able to share my story at TedXBucharest and hopefully share a larger message along with it.I believe in the power of telling stories, so I really try to tell ones that will make a positive difference to people’s lives.
Franzi, you are a producer, how did this come about?
From the same place as Tijana’s passion for storytelling - family. My dad was a festival producer before he retired and my mum runs her own event and talent agency from home (while she was simultaneously raising 3 children, looking after two dogs and caring for her own parents) so I naturally got roped into producing from a very young age, worked on festivals every summer and helped my parents in my free time where I could.
What does 2020 have instore for FN?
Hopefully working with a lot more wonderful brands while also continuing to foster our community. We’re in very early stages of organising a more regular event series which might turn into a podcast. We just have so much to say with and through our amazing community so it seems like an organic move!
Thank you so much, Tijana and Franzi!
Follow Female Narratives on Instagram for your daily dose of girl power
