Stockland Martel

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If you haven’t met them already, allow me to introduce you to Scott & Zoë. They have excellent (and often retro-influenced) style, they’re really into saturated color, and their work has a super-distinct graphic sensibility. Scott Darling and Zoë van Baaren met in college 15 years ago and have been working together professionally for 12 years.

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Although they are two people—I know this because I’ve talked to them both on the phone at the same time—they are able to tap into a shared well of imagination and inspiration. Until very recently, they’d dream up, map out, and execute every aspect of a project together, working as a pair during pre- and post-production and on set. This past summer, though, they packed up their things and their children and moved from Brooklyn to Portland, Oregon. It’s a major understatement to say that they love their new home. They’ve been having a lot of what they call “I heart Portland” moments.
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Their physical location isn’t the only part of their lives that Scott and Zoë have changed; they’ve also made a small adjustment to the way they work. Their shared-brain process is as strong as ever, but now Scott has officially taken on the mantle of photographer, and Zoë stays behind as he goes on set. Okay, she did accompany him to the shoot for a credit-card campaign last month in L.A., but in the future she’ll be at home for the actual photography part of their projects.

Some people are resistant to change—probably because it stirs up the unknown, and the unknown can be scary—but I think it’s essential to try new things. Sometimes the unknown is way better than the known ever was. Curious about how Scott and Zoë’s foray into the new was going, I called them up and asked them.

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First of all, you guys are a team, and I bet clients who haven’t worked with you wonder how that plays out. What’s the division of labor, creatively?

Z: “Scott & Zoë” have evolved. We’re still a creative team, and we still do concept and preproduction and post-production together. But Scott is now the photographer and will be the one who is at the shoots. We’ll have a concrete idea of exactly what the image will look like, and Scott will execute it.

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Why did you guys move to Portland?

Z: We were doing a Target shoot last year with Wieden & Kennedy. They’re like, “Oh, you’ve never been to Portland? “You’d love it!” They were like this cheerleading force for Portland. That kind of stuck in our heads. And then we kept seeing stories in The New York Times about Portland. So we booked tickets to visit in May. And we loved it. We came back to New York on a Sunday and put the house on the market on Monday. We sold it in three weeks and moved here in July. When it’s right, it’s right.

S: We felt that we needed to be in a place where we can explore our creativity, a place that’s inspiring. The day after we moved, one of our favorite stylists happened to move here too. She lives a street away from us.

Z: It’s soooo invigorating to be here. There are no egos. It’s just a great posse of people. Also, we produce a lot of jobs up here already. We have clients—in Vancouver, San Francisco, and we just shot in L.A.—that are psyched that we moved. It’s really happening up here.

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Where in Portland do you live?
S: We’re at the base of Washington Park, where there’s a rose garden that Portland is famous for. Our kids are playing hide and seek among the roses, rather than dodging cars in Brooklyn.

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You’ve mentioned to me before that where you sort of feed off of your environment. In what ways has living in Portland inspired you?

Z: This place has the most killer farmer’s market you will ever see on the planet earth. These people put flowers together—you go up to them and say, “My room is tangerine and cobalt blue,” and they go, “Great,” and they mix these flowers. Also, Scott and I are foodies, so the market just rocks our world—the color palettes, and how fresh and local everything is. There’s this thrift-store culture. We’ve just gone around and bought sweet old pieces of furniture for the house in colors like kelly green and canary yellow.

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Where are you from originally?
S: I grew up in Southern California.

Z: And I’m Dutch and Scottish, but I’ve lived all over the world. To me, Portland is like English flora, but better. It feels like home for both of us, but for different reasons. And there are the nicest people here. It’s like everyone’s drinking happy water.

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