It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a flying dress.
The train of Adriannea Smith’s canary yellow gown blowing in the wind could be seen for miles as she posed against the backdrop of the Aegean Sea and the whitewashed rooftops and blue domes in Oia, the seaside town on the Greek island of Santorini.
“I’ve had this on my wish list,” Smith told The Post. “I planned this trip with the shoot in mind,” Smith, of Atlanta, Georgia, said of the Greek island cruise he took last month.
Travelers are saying “yes” in droves to the photo of flying dresses, with dresses flying in photos of idyllic destinations like the Greek Isles, Dubai, Cappadocia in Turkey and even the Brooklyn Bridge.
The images, which usually take just over an hour to take, are gaining thousands of likes and appearing all over Instagram and TikTok as the latest vacation status symbol.
The #FlyingDress hashtag has 52.6 million views on TikTok, and photographers in some of the most sought-after vacation destinations are cashing in on the trend.
Smith, a travel agent and travel content creator who runs the @StandByAdrie account, says the photo was meant to spark travel envy in her followers, helping her promote her business and, in the process, serving as a time to “treat yourself”. The video showing the session garnered 20,000 views on Instagram and 481 likes.
The photos, he says, will last a lifetime.
“I definitely felt like a supermodel,” Smith said of the $605 shoot. She booked it through GoddessSantorini.com, which bills itself as a “premiere flying dress company.”
Flying Dress photo company has a package for around $1,680 that includes transportation to and from the session, hair and makeup, dress, a two-hour session, editing, retouching, and ownership of the photo and video rights.
That also includes a wizard to help achieve the dramatically long look when subjects pose and waltz in videos.
Smith said that while taking photos seems like a breeze, it’s a back-job behind the scenes. Since the photos are usually taken barefoot, she comically recalls having to jump on hot cobblestones in the heavy dress as if it were effortless.
Meanwhile, in the Dubai desert on a recent girls’ trip, Keisha Nelson and seven of her friends put on a Flying Dress formation, for a whopping $4,200. That included dresses, makeup, round-trip hotel transportation, and cameo appearances for the two-hour shoot, which incorporated both individual and group shots.
“We wanted to do something glamorous and fun…we’ve been planning this trip for over a year and thought this was one of the activities we could do collectively that would fit our personalities and vacation vibe,” Nelson, 43, a manager account supervisor who opted for a green halter dress, she told The Post.
While the photos look aesthetically airy, Nelson, from Manhattan, says the rising mercury brought a lot of heat to the shoot. Still, he says it was worth every penny: posing with a real camel, he said, was priceless.
“I felt beautiful and majestic and empowered,” she said.
Her friend, New York City publicist Rashidah Timothy, who opted for a blue dress in the photo, enthusiastically posted the group photo to her Instagram, garnering 272 likes and 69 comments, Nelson said.
I’m thinking of framing one [photo] for my husband for our anniversary this year,” Nelson said.
In New York City, photographer Leo Cabrera began taking photos of flying dresses after seeing an influx of train shows passing through Turkey and Santorini on Instagram. He began incorporating the shots into his business in early 2022, averaging 100 shots per year, locally on the Brooklyn Bridge and around Central Park and flying to Dubai and the Dominican Republic to get the shots.
“I try not to do more than two shots a day,” Cabrera told The Post, about having to limit demand because the shots are labor-intensive. His packages include a 1-hour photo shoot, dress rental (the dresses, he says, are designed by a stylist in Turkey), 15 edited and retouched photos, and location scouting for $400.
“Usually the photo sessions are done very early in the morning to avoid crowds and in places with enough space to work with the dress,” she told The Post.
A little vanity fanfare comes free: Smith remembers feeling like a celebrity, with onlookers gawking at her shoot.
“Passing tourists say, ‘Oh my gosh, you look so pretty.’ It was definitely a good time. I was like, ‘I look good and I feel beautiful, even though I was sweating,’ she said.