A few hours before the flashbulbs go off, a team of professional stylists are scrambling to make sure Oprah Winfrey, Jennifer Lopez and Scarlett Johansson look just right.
Not the real Oprah, J. Lo and ScarJo. These are models, between the ages of 5 and 7, who are dressing up to look like the mini spitting images of A-list celebrities on Oscars night. They’re at Toddlewood, a children’s photography studio in Great Neck, New York, opened by photographer Tricia Messeroux.
In the 36 hours after every major award show from the Grammy Awards to the Academy Awards, Messeroux and her team start a mad dash to choose which red carpet looks to recreate, cast appropriate models, hand craft the miniature couture looks and stage a day-long photo shoot where kids are painted and posed to look like their celebrity doppelgangers did in Hollywood just a couple days before.
This year’s shoot includes seven looks from the 2015 Oscars: Reese Witherspoon’s two-toned off-the-shoulder number, Oprah’s nude gown, Dakota Johnson in slinky bright red, Scarlett Johansson in emerald green, J. Lo’s navel-grazing confection, Kelly Osbourne in black lace, and Kevin Hart in a white suit alongside his fiancé Eniko Parrish.
Designer Andrea Pitter, who is tasked with making all of the gowns, arrived in Manhattan’s Garment District early Monday morning, and has been cutting, sewing and trying to stay awake ever since.
When she arrived at the shoot, all that was left to do was glue on 200 gems and pearls to mini J. Lo’s dress, since she had to bring up the neckline to make it more “kid-friendly.”
Jordyn Murvil, the five-year-old cast as a pint-sized Oprah, flew in from Detroit at the crack of dawn Tuesday to make it to the shoot on time. Her mom, Shavon, sent Jordyn’s photo in after seeing Toddlewood’s photos on Instagram.
“She had no idea who Oprah was. My mother had to show her photos in ‘O Magazine,'” Murvil said.
Jordyn, who sat in a makeup chair clutching an iPad showing photos of Ms. Winfrey, was asked if she knew what the mega star did. “She makes books? She’s an actress?” she said, tentatively.
Five-year-old Jadyn Tattlii was getting her hair spray-painted purple to look like Kelly Osbourne, her mother, Lisa, hovering nearby.
She stared at herself in a hand-mirror, eyelashes heavy with mascara. She’s about to have Osbourne’s skull-and-crossbone foot tattoos drawn in eyeliner across her tiny feet.
“I have long eyelashes! And purple hair!” she screamed to her reflection. “I can’t wait to show my daddy.”
Gabrielle Rodriguez, 7, and dressed as Dakota Johnson for the day, had just finished getting her clip-in bangs and fiery red lip color when her mom, Lori, told her she couldn’t play with the other waiting kids anymore, so she wouldn’t mess up her makeup. Her face fell for a minute, until she started taking selfies with Lori’s phone.
Once her look was complete, everyone in the room tried to figure out how a 7-year-old wearing a tiny body-hugging dress looked every bit like Johnson, only a few feet and a couple assets short. Her mother Lori’s mouth dropped.
“I’m dying! She doesn’t look like herself,” she said. “I don’t even know what her dad’s going to say.”
Messeroux’s been doing these kinds of shoots since 2008, but she opened her studio last spring. She invests about $1,500 in the day, but it pays off, she said. Once the photos are out there, parents clamor to get portraits done at Toddlewood. She does private shoots, as well as birthday parties that include similar hair and makeup, dressing up and glamor shots, and can cost parents up to $1,500.
“We’ve gotten a lot of attention. Kim Kardashian Instagrammed the photo we did of her and Kanye West from the Grammys and it got a million likes. Her caption was, ‘Does it get any cuter?!?!?!?!,'” she said.
Some of the moms were starting to get starstruck.
Danijela Del Forna, whose 5-year-old, Ivana, was dressed up as Scarlett Johansson, could not get over the transformation.
“Oh my gosh, you look like Scarlett,” she said to Ivana. “I wish they had this for adults.”
