CHANTELLE-SHAKILA TIAGI: Founder of Creative Agency, Tiagi

Every image you've ever stopped scrolling for, or seen in a magazine, has an invisible layer underneath it that most people never think about. Someone booked the studio, hired the photographer, coordinated the creative team, put options on locations weeks in advance, solved the twenty problems that came up before the first shot was taken, and made the whole thing look easy. That person is the producer. And for two decades in the luxury and editorial world, that person has often been Chantelle-Shakila Tiagi.

Founder of Tiagi, a creative production agency with offices in London, Los Angeles and India, Chantelle has led campaigns, fashion shows and live events for some of the most recognised names in fashion, from Balmain and Gucci to Dazed, Perfect Magazine and Vogue. She is calm and assured, so you imagine it takes a lot to rattle her, as well as being being wonderfully deadpan. What makes Chantelle’s story worth telling isn't just what she's built - it's how almost accidentally she built it, and what she learned along the way about knowing when to push, when to stop, and what success actually looks like when you're honest with yourself about it.

The Star Behind the Scenes

Chantelle studied theatre arts at university and had every intention of working in performance. A chance encounter with an MTV producer filming on campus during an internship module, and a refusal to take a polite brush-off for an answer, put her on an entirely different trajectory.

"I think he was probably being polite and didn't expect me to absolutely stalk him down. I basically kept knocking on his door until he let me in."

Most people, Chantelle included before her MTV placement and internship at Liberty, look at a beautiful editorial shoot or film and assume a photographer just rocked up to a beach with a camera and some clothes. What they don't see is everything that happened before that moment: the studio or location optioned weeks in advance, the photographer and stylist and hair and makeup team booked and briefed, the permits, the equipment, the call sheets, the contingency plans for when something inevitably goes sideways. Chantelle hadn't even known this was a job you could have, and after seeing a producer at Liberty bossing people around and being super organised she knew she wanted to do it.

"I wanted to be the doer behind the scene - the star behind the scenes."

It's a pattern that started earlier than you might expect. At nine years old, Chantelle decided she wanted to go to boarding school and instead of asking for permission took matters into her own hands. Her parents had taught her to use the phone for useful things such as booking restaurants, so one day Chantelle found a school she liked, rang the admissions office and made herself an appointment unbeknownst to her parents. Her father was therefore completely baffled to receive a call from the school admissions office shortly afterwards to arrange an entrance exam. Her dad, to his enormous credit, agreed to entertain it, Chantelle sat the exam, won a scholarship, and off she went.

Straight In at the Deep End

Chantelle’s first proper role was at REP Limited, a boutique photography and stylist agency that represented some enormous names while operating out of what was, in reality, a very small team. She was 21, hired to replace someone a decade older and considerably more experienced, and the first three months were rough without much formal training so she was figuring out everything herself as she went along.

"One day something clicked, and I was like actually, I get this. I understand this, and I can do it."

Once it clicked, it really clicked. Within a few years Chantelle was producing three or four major campaign and editorial shoots simultaneously across multiple countries largely alone, being the single point of contact for everything. She didn't realise at the time how unusual that was. Nobody had told her it wasn't normal, so she just got on with it.

The Accidental Entrepreneur

After leaving REP and picking up freelance work for Porter magazine, Chantelle landed her first solo high-profile editorial shoots with Claire Foy and Rosamund Pike. When she mentioned this to her father, he pointed out that producing shoots of that scale as a private individual was probably not a great idea from a liability standpoint. So she opened a company.

"That is literally why I opened it as a business, because I thought it would protect me. That was the only reason."

The real turning point came with a Balmain campaign to unveil their new monogram. It was a huge job which she produced alongside a photographer who had no agent, no production infrastructure and no idea how to price himself. She helped him figure it out, the work was excellent, and the business properly took off from there. Building a team followed. Momentum built. Everything was pointing in the right direction.

Then, on the first of March 2020, Chantelle signed the lease and picked up the keys to a brand new photography studio. The mortgage was in place. The space was hers. The next day, the world shut down.

When shoots were eventually permitted again, with temperature checks, sanitisation protocols and a whole new set of rules to produce around, Chantelle found herself, dealing with a situation that tested her creativity and resolve like no other.

The job was a fine jewellery shoot. The photographer arrived on set but refused his mandatory COVID test. Chantelle put her foot down and insisted and it turned out to be positive, so she only had one option left - lock him in the basement studio on his own whilst the shoot continued. Obsessed.

"I knew, he knew. We didn't have any option. I knew we wouldn’t be able to get another photographer and we’d already lost too much time. So he did the whole shoot remotely, and his team were basically his hands. We were there till three or four in the morning. It was crazy."

The set designer had COVID too and was dialling in remotely, directing his assistants on exactly where to position each piece. A fine jewellery shoot - one of the most technically precise jobs in fashion, where a millimetre in the wrong direction matters - coordinated almost entirely by proxy, in the early hours of the morning, with a photographer locked in a basement. She tells it with barely a flicker of drama. It was a problem. She solved it. They got the shot.

What Success Actually Looks Like

Ask Chantelle what she's most proud of and it’s opening her office in India. She is British-Indian, and there's a warmth in how she talks about it that goes much deeper than the commercial rationale.

"There isn't another production company that does what we do that's present there. For my heritage, that was something my parents were really proud of."

And that shift from chasing the impressive credit to building something that means something, is probably the best illustration of how Chantelle’s definition of success has changed over time.

Earlier in her career, success meant names. Household names, recognisable campaigns, the kind of credits that made other people in the industry sit up. She's refreshingly honest about the external validation she sought, which, to be fair, is where most people start.

Over time, and particularly after having her son eight months before we spoke, that definition shifted into something far more personal.

"Success for me is having built something that works for me and my life and the people in it. I earn as much as I put in, and no one tells me I can't go and pick up my kid. That's success to me."

The career advice that follows is direct in a way that only comes from hard experience. She's particularly pointed on one thing she wishes someone had told her earlier: understand what the top of your particular field actually looks like before you spend years climbing towards it.

"The climb to the top might not actually be the top that you want. You might just want to be a really good exec producer, doing loads of shoots, being on set. Because if you go higher, you're not going to be producing anything."

My Take

I'm drawn to people who have built careers from instinct rather than blueprint, and Chantelle is one of the most compelling examples I've come across of what that looks like when it's backed by genuine tenacity. I’m obsessed with her boarding school story because it reveals something that stayed constant through everything that followed. She knew what she wanted. She worked out what she needed to do. Then she just did it, knowing she would be able to make it work.

At first glance, Chantelle’s story appears to be about unwavering confidence but the real thread is clarity. She knew what she wanted at nine years old. She knew she'd rather be behind the camera than in front of it. She knew, eventually, that the top of someone else's ladder wasn't where she wanted to be. The tenacity, the assurance, the ability to build something that genuinely fits her life, all had clarity as the foundation.

Chantelle's point about climbing higher and losing the work you love is something I felt myself in my final years in corporate fashion, when the job had become more spreadsheet than people. I see it constantly in my coaching work too - senior people in fashion who got where they thought they wanted to be, only to find it bore no resemblance to what had drawn them to the industry in the first place. Nobody told them the climb would take them further from the thing they loved. Or maybe they told themselves it was worth it. Until one day, it wasn't.

And then there's the piece about not wanting to be beholden to anyone else's schedule or definition of what a successful day looks like. This doesn't have to mean founding a business, though for Chantelle it did. It means reaching a point where work and life stop competing and start fitting together. Where being a high achiever and being present in your own life aren't in opposition.

Chantelle built the infrastructure that made her version possible over many years. But the thing she built first - that self-knowledge, that clarity about what she actually wanted - that's where everything else began. It usually is.

Follow Chantelle and Tiagi on Instagram at @notoriouscst @tiagi

About the author: Pippa Mellor is a fashion career strategist and EMCC-accredited executive coach helping experienced women in the fashion industry redesign the next chapter of their career or business through her True Fit™ coaching programme.

Enjoyed reading this?

Click here to receive monthly conversations with inspiring women in fashion straight to your inbox.