Welcome to our first blog post! I’m Leslie, and together with my husband Daniel, we are your Argyle & Lace Photography team. People ask us all the time where our business name comes from so I figured I use that as an opportunity to make our first blog post. Hint: It represents the two of us!
Backstory: Daniel had his own photography business, Daniel Hendley Photography, based out of North Carolina for over 10 years. He realized his passion for photography while attending UNC and working as a photographer for the campus newspaper, The Daily Tarheel. He worked a full-time job as a content editor and ran his photography business in the evenings and on the weekends. I also worked full-time as a content editor at the same company, though we were based in different states. Fast forward to 2019, after knowing each other for 12 years and dating for the last 5 of those years, we got married!!! (I know, what took us so long, right?)
Getting married while being residents of two different states (Alabama and North Carolina) brought on a new set of challenges to planning a wedding… and our life together. We considered who would move and ultimately decided on him moving to Huntsville, Alabama, where I grew up. In fact, having to move his photography business so far away from his client-base was probably the hardest factor in the decision (aside from moving away from his family). I already owned a home in Alabama, we both liked the Huntsville area, and we saw the potential for starting our married life together here.
Daniel mentioned to me during the process of moving his business that he wanted to change the name to something that incorporated both of us since I had become a part of his business and was already handling scheduling, communications, marketing, editing, etc… I have to admit that I was a little hesitant because he’s the talented photographer and he had worked so hard at building the business. I didn’t want to take away from that because believe me I am so proud of how hard he works to make his clients happy. But, if you get to know Daniel at all, you’ll learn that he is not the type of person that seeks being in the spotlight. He rather the focus remain on the photography and his clients. So, we began the process of inventing a new name for our new location.
We went through a long list of potential words that we felt would represent each of us…our likes, interests, styles, history, etc… We wanted the words to represent us without just being our names and we wanted it to be something that had a good ring to it. (I didn’t want some awkward jumble of words to become our new logo, website, email addresses, etc…) I decided the main word had to be focused on Daniel.
Since North Carolina had always been his home and UNC-Chapel Hill his alma mater, I wanted some way to reflect that connection. After all, without his work at the Daily Tarheel, he may have never discovered his love for photography and we wouldn’t be where we are today. We worked our way through words with connections to his time at UNC like Carolina, Tarheel, Ramseys, Chapel Hill, Old East, Franklin Street, etc… Nothing was really standing out to us as something we’d want to use so I kept trying to brainstorm.
I thought about the University of Alabama and what words I would use to represent that for me…Crimson, Houndstooth….people automatically know Houndstooth typically signifies Alabama (at least in Alabama) so what would be the equivalent of Houndstooth for UNC?? Turns out that just like people associate the houndstooth pattern with Alabama, people in NC associate the argyle pattern with UNC.
In 1991, Coach Dean Smith asked a local fashion designer to redesign the UNC basketball uniforms. The designer, Alexander Julian, had won his first Coty Award utilizing an argyle pattern so he considered it his lucky signature and because of his love for his alma mater, he wanted to incorporate his lucky pattern into the Carolina Blue uniform. Once Michael Jordan decided he liked the Argyle idea best out of all the options, others quickly followed suit. You can still see the classic argyle pattern running down the sides of the team’s uniforms today. So, Argyle stuck for our name because not only does it represent Daniel’s ties to UNC, but it is classic and timeless much like we hope the images we create for you will be too.
Now that we had a word that represented Daniel and our business, we needed to find a word to represent me. (Unfortunately, Argyle & Houndstooth Photography doesn’t have the feel we were going for…) While I have eclectic tastes and enjoy most styles, I have a special place in my heart for anything vintage, particularly when you can repurpose vintage items or incorporate them somehow into a modern design. I have antique, solid wood furniture pieces that have been refinished in my house. I love old picture frames and photographs. My wedding ring, while new, is designed in a vintage style. My wedding dress was completely lace to give it a more vintage feel. Thus, lace represents the feminine, vintage element I bring to the business. Lace is also very detailed, beautiful and timeless. A description we hope your family can use to describe the images we create for you.
