Put It On. Own The Court.
Bad Padel went tropical for the launch of Padel Bad Girl and Ooh La La Ranges. Eight women, no professional models, no rehearsals. Then they put the clothes on.
We went to the Philippines to shoot Bad Padel.
Not because we wanted another perfectly polished fashion shoot with professional models who already knew exactly where to stand, how to pose and when to look at the camera.
We wanted something different, and as a new brand we want to disrupt and always be creative. We got that here!
The eight women you see in these photos and videos aren't professional models. They have other jobs, other lives and, for most of them, this was their first proper shoot.
No rehearsals. No practising poses. No lessons in how to walk towards a camera looking suitably serious.
That was exactly what we wanted.
The Entrance
We could have picked everyone up in a minibus.
Far too normal.
One arrived on a horse. She'd never ridden a horse before. She got on anyway.
Others arrived in a Filipino jeepney. Loud, colourful, slightly chaotic and absolutely impossible to ignore.
Then came the tuk tuks. Golf carts and a beast of a motorbike. Padel rackets. Clothes everywhere.
The shoot hadn't even properly started.
"Nobody told the girls to look confident doing any of it. They just did."
That became one of the things we loved about shooting in the Philippines. Everyone involved brought warmth, humour and a willingness to just get on with whatever slightly strange idea we came up with next.
The energy was right. The people were right.
Within no time at all, the shoot had started developing a life of its own.
Then They Put The Clothes On
This was the bit that really got us.
Padel Bad Girl. Ooh La La.
Padel skirts, crop tops, shorts, polos, tanks and tops. Some edgy. Some glamorous. Some slightly crazy. None of it designed to disappear into the background.
And almost immediately, something changed.
They became more themselves. A little sassier. A little more confident. Taking the mickey out of each other. Dancing between shots. Playing to the camera.
Nobody really had to tell them what Bad Padel was supposed to look like.
They just got it.
On The Move
Can Clothes Actually Make You Play Better?
Probably not. Let's not get carried away.
A great padel skirt isn't going to fix your backhand. A crop top isn't suddenly going to give you a better smash.
But can what you're wearing change how you feel when you walk onto a padel court? Absolutely.
You put something on, look in the mirror and just feel good in it. You stand a little differently. Walk a little differently. You feel comfortable. You feel confident. You stop worrying quite so much about what everybody else thinks.
That's always been part of the thinking behind Bad Padel. We love the sport. We've just never understood why padel clothing has to be so serious, safe and predictable.
Padel Bad Girl is one attitude. Ooh La La is another. You don't have to look like everybody else. Put on the one that feels like you. Own it.
Then It Got Slightly Out Of Hand
Once everyone relaxed, our list of sensible ideas became increasingly irrelevant.
At various points there were horses, jeepneys, tuk tuks and golf carts. Then somebody thought a tug of war involving padel rackets would be a good idea. So obviously we did that too.
At another point we had waiters serving the girls on silver trays.
Some ideas worked exactly as we'd imagined. Others went in completely different directions. Those often produced the best footage.
Because once everyone started enjoying themselves, it stopped feeling like eight people had turned up to model some padel clothes. It became Bad Padel.
"It stopped feeling like eight people had turned up to model some padel clothes. It became Bad Padel."
Behind The Scenes
There is far too much from this shoot to squeeze into one article. Over the next few weeks we're going back behind the scenes and telling the individual stories. The jeepney. The tug of war. The court shoots. The moments nobody planned that ended up being better than the ones we did.
Put it on.
Own the court.
