By: Anne-Marie Curtis Follow @amcELLE

All images by Thomas Whiteside

I wanted to do something quite polished on Rita, and quite stripped back, but something slightly old-school-glamour as well.

The whole concept of the Asia theme, with the kimonos and the colourful prints, was a good way to get there and we thought it would be quite fun for her; quite glamorous, quite grown-up.

We had an amazing dress, which was the one on the subscriber cover. It had that slightly kind of Opium, 70s feel, which we thought worked really well. It also had a little bit of Studio 54 in there, which is quite Rita, I think.

We also had lots of beautiful prints. We had an amazing skirt – a printed, kind of motif-ed pencil skirt, which was beautiful, and a really beautiful palm print kimono from . All quite special pieces, with a little bit of a vintage feel.

The newsstand cover picture was the skirt. We knew we wanted to do something with quite a lot of skin with her but once we saw the tattoo, it all really came together.

It was just one of those pictures. We tried it with the top. It was never the intention to do a naked shot of her, but it just worked really beautifully.

Sometimes that happens; what you think might work, really does. That’s the magic of shooting a cover. There’s often a beautiful surprise.