From Lingerie Saleswoman to Lingerie Model

Working a retail job can be grueling, even if you’re folding satin and lace lingerie from Agent Provocateur. That was how Paloma Faith and Alice Hawkins used to spend their afternoons before they left to pursue artistic careers — Faith as a singer, Hawkins as a photographer. Now they’re back, starring in ads for the store where they used to work.

Faith was just 21 and still in school when she worked at Agent Provocateur, but in the brand’s fall campaign, Knickers Forever, she’s the ultimate store manager, wiping windows and managing the front desk in a floor-length lace robe, complicated underthings, and pom-pom heels. Hawkins took the photos and video, using the Polaroids she used to snap of her co-workers in the back room as inspiration. (Keeping with that tradition, the brand is streaming more from behind the silk curtains on Snapchat and Periscope.) 

Watch the video below, and click through the slideshow to see the campaign, behind-the-scenes Polaroids, and a snapshot from Faith’s days as a shop girl in 2006.