London-based food and prop stylist, Frankie Unsworth, understands the importance of having your cake and eating it too. Working with cooks, photographers, and writers, Unsworth make sure their set and dishes are properly styled so that they showcase their cooking skills but also create a certain atmosphere.
According to Unsworth, it’s all in the details. “I love the finickity little details that go into my job,” she admitted in an interview with Linen Beauty, “picking out the prettiest leaves for the top of a salad, carefully segmenting citrus with surgical precision and the regular challenge of wrangling a linen napkin into a seemingly natural but picture-perfect positon beside a plate.”
On top of being a food stylist, Unsworth is also a home economist and recipe writer and tester, with her clients including brands and publications like Twinings, Penguin Random House, Harper Collins, and The Guardian. “I have always been obsessed with food and everything that goes with the experience of eating, so working in some way within the food industry was always on the cards for me,” she admits.
According to Unsworth, her fascination with food began when she was just a child. “Even as a child I loved soaking in the atmosphere in restaurants, obsessing over every little detail and specifically chose to study languages at school (Italian, French, Spanish) from countries whose cuisines I liked the most,” she says. After working as a staff writer for many years on an Italian food magazine, she found her true calling in the visual side of storytelling. “It was the visuals as much as the words that inspired me,” she notes, “and I love the demands of working in a kitchen, being on my feet all day and working with my hands.”
Her recent book The New Art of Cooking is dedicated to the preparation, cooking, and serving details that make a BIG difference.
