As Lydia Harper aimed her camera at the crowds gathered in Melbourne, Australia, there was only one way to describe the swarm of people: proper, pure racing fans. The city hosted both the Formula One and Two Australian Grands Prix that weekend at Albert Park Circuit, with the latter making history as FIA F2 debuted in the Southern Hemisphere.
Among the fans jumping and shouting for drivers to come give autographs, a tote bag with Parc Fermé in capital letters caught Harper’s eye as she photographed the environment. The phrase literally translates to “closed park” in French and is often used in motor sports to describe a secure area at the circuit where cars are checked. The bag is just one piece of merchandise that has been designed and put out by the creative agency Harper runs, none other than Parc Fermé itself. And just as F2 is widely recognized as a launch pad for up-and-coming drivers, the feeder series has provided Parc Fermé with a space to put down roots, grow and expand.
Harper, 32, and her sister, Alice, 27, launched their brand during the height of the pandemic, in 2020. Harper was already in business as a wedding and lifestyle photographer, while Alice worked in fashion. Eventually the two of them saw a gap in motor sports, especially when it came to creative merchandising and storytelling. But they had no contacts, no history with the sport (beyond a one-off bike event in ’18 that Harper photographed) and no idea how to get into the industry. So they did what anyone else would do: Fake it till you make it. For Harper, that meant showing up with a camera and proving she could capture all the action at a race. At the end of the year, she got a job within F1 as a freelance photographer, and, as it would turn out, her work was exactly what motor sports needed.
