mercredi 30 avril 2014

Blue is the warmest colour

By Al Essandro 
Sometimes your best ideas come from people you don't expect. 
I was about to cut some dolls  head with pink and purple hair for my next bingo dress and my flatmate looking casually at the creepy operating table  "the head are a too big, why don't you die blue some barbie hair"; 

Période bleue
I don't know if she was expecting me to try it immediately , otherwise she won't probably submit it.  "That is genius, And I run in my room to find  some dying I bought in a tourist shop in camden when I first arrived to London and wanted to get the full "SaintMartins look".  

I let them dried in the draining board, so that is the kind of scene  you can expect when you live with me and you wake up in the morning.  



Then I thought, if I am wearing a blue dress with blue hair barbie on it, logically I should also died my hair in blue to match it! My flatmate came again with a brilliant idea: I had a Sea punk party and we coloured our hair with oil pastel. 


Basically on wet hair, you rub the pastel on, it is not like a spray so your hair 
Everybody was very impressed and didn't believe me when I say it's just chalk, 
you can find a lot of tutorial online:  I am such a badass, I don't use plastic glove to protect my hands!)" 

By Stefano Sini 

The only thing is that is not really staying on, so if you run your hand through your hair, your hand will be blue, and when you are sweating your neck become blue (this is not really glam but I think you had to know) The good thing is when you wash it, everything go away you feel you are taking a blue lagoon shower! 


By Stefano Sini 

If you are cycling under an uncertain weather you are praying "please I wish is not going to rain, can you imagine yourself arriving to a meeting dripping blue?  

This dress was found by my Mum in a charity shop but it has sleeves and a really restrictive collar, so i completely changing it transforming the collar into a floaty veil on the low cut at the net. 
And I had the blued dyed barbie hair.  

Blue Bingo with Luxuriouxsnacks in Restaurant Bar 90, fun, music, drinks and amazing kitsch prices! 



By Stefano Sini 

Blue hair and red coat 
I don't know how to play chess, this is just for the picture 

By Al Essandro

I likes the primary colours on the black dress  creating a graphic gems pattern, feel  like a postmodern stained-glass window.  
Dress made with the help of Berenike Corcuera.   


That what remains when your drill holes into Legos. 






About the Primark case, I am glad to see that my Primak bag dress (read the interview on Primark website have been liked by more than 16.300 people on instagram !
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mercredi 23 avril 2014

Wear theatre costume in your everyday life

By Emma Zarifi

I met Emma at Cult Mountain and by the way she was dressed (yes I am the kind of person you judge a book by its cover)  I immediately wanted to know her.  

By Emma Zarifi
" Emma ZARIFI performance artist & image maker.  Her work is based on her own experiences & journey throughout her life, use of vivid colour to express personality" I felt that statement was perfect to match with my colourful world 

By Emma Zarifi
The dolls bride costume was made for Sue Kreitzman performance at Cult Mountain, I think I have an obsession with wedding dress,  (a bit worrying). I like them big fluffy meringue with vintage lace or lots of tulle   like my halloween costume of last year (not this one, the year before) where I dressed as a dead bride.  


By Emma Zarifi

Ring available on my online shop 


By Emma Zarifi

By Emma Zarifi

The head piece is made just with black baby dolls  (which are harder to find!) 
This dress is also inspired by the piece "Childhood" by the artist Charles Pfahl who I find the work really powerful.   

 “Childhood” series feature baby dolls and stuffed animals experiencing various forms of suffocation or decay.  In these images,  we don't know if Charles Pfahl explores his childhood in particular the nature of childhood and memory more generally but it is interesting that like in my work (even if I am not trying to say I am at the same level) dolls are a introspective medium viscerally linked to a muddled aspect of childhood. 


As you may have noticed, I don't really dress according to the last trend. I love former theatre costume, colourful dress, that my Mum find for me at charity shops. Something a bit outdated, with a strange length or a colours you wouldn't think wearing this season.  Something atemporal that doesn't belong to any specific style like this blue dress which makes me feel like the blue fairy in Pinocchio.  

By Emma Zarifi

By Emma Zarifi



Ok, I am not a dancer. I am as graceful as a broomstick, when I was 6 years old I went to dance class like all the little girl, (I was really disappointed when I realised you had to wear body and leggings and not a a ballet tutu.  ,  I was so bad that for the end of the year show they put me at very back to limit the damage. But the floaty aspect of  the pleat make me feel like trying some new dance steps! 


necklace available on my online shop 


With Britt Foe at a Cult Mountain Party, Coral & blue mach so well!

By Emma Zarifi
I feel this is a bit like a flamenco dress. I took of the barbie flowers from the  pink dress I made before to stitch them on this new red dress in order to always recycle myself! 
By Emma Zarifi

And  a bit of Lego for the road...
Featuring my beloved vinage Fendi skirt! 

Wearing my Lego jacket perfecto upside down, back and front! 

I live this picture that Emma took on the spot whereas I was offering some tea, my kitchen suddenly feels so 70s! 


In L'édition du Soir, Ouest France, (vive la Bretagne! thanks to the awesome Marie-Paula from Mademoiselle Marie.

Lovely interview about my work and my vision of art and life (seems quite pompous when I say it like this but it is actually quite light-hearted ) On the Dainty Dolls house
It is so nice to see all the adorable comments and the feed back on my work, as it only makes sense in the relationship with an audiences.   
"Her contribution to the Artistic world is one of bright colours, different ways of thinking, happiness & most of all for me - uniqueness! When we live in a world that we're constantly pushed to be the same...it is refreshing to find someone who breaks free of that & let's her creative nature run wild!" 



"I love that she doesn't back down to the society norm. She's true to herself. I respect that immensely" I don't know if I achieve that in my work but if someone I don't know can perceive it, it is already a small victory for me! 

dimanche 13 avril 2014

Lego Lass


By Stefano Sini
I've been doing this interactive costume base performance in 2 different places and two different context and atmosphere.  
I've first performed in the Battersea art centre for "Play Festival 
then I performed it in the bar Number 90 in Hackney Wick during a DJ set live, 

I made this dress with flat lego bricks and lego plates. 
During the performance, I was inviting people to build my dress directly on my body to create a living lego construction.  
So this is an evolving garment, always moving, between construction and destruction (because some bricks fall when I am walking or people undo what previous people just built). The final dress is the product of the meeting of tow creativity, mine and the one of the audience, making its own design by contributing to the dress, litéralement "apporter sa pierre à l'édifice" . 
People reactions are generally positive positive, and people are really responsive. If some people just reject the offer straight away, the majority is really enthusiastic "of course" yes sure can I?" 
It is a really good way to get in contact with people.  Because the proposal is so strong and so surreal, Imagine a girl dressed  with a Lego dress asking you to build her dress, that they have nearly no other option that to accept.  


When people realise they can pick any bricks and can put it anywhere, that the possibility of combinations are infinite, they are just going crazy looking frenetically in the box the perfect lego piece.  





This piece is like a Proust Madeleine, a remembrance of childhood. "My God, it has been such a long time I didn't play with Lego", "I use to be very good at that".  
At Restaurant 90, a little girl just followed me all night completely fascinated by the piece, just keeping on adding more and more lego on the back of the dress in order to create a big tail.  


Sometimes people ask you question, why are you doing that?  where is the idea come from.  

By Stefano Sini


By Stefano Sini


It reveals also the will to test the limits of the performance and always try to get around the rules.   You will think people will go for simplicity and take a square brick and just adding it gently on the dress, They will always try to put the lego in the weirdest place, (lot of people were actually interested in artificially  growing my breast out of lego) choosing the most incongruous  shape and trying desperately to incorporate it to the ensemble. Some people go for really elaborate construction creating full extension of the body "I want to make you a unicorn, building a colourful horn on the hat" I am going to build a house on your shoulder" I want to link your dress and your hat.  


between the performance, only the colour of the ties change! 

By Stefano Sini

To come back home I just kept my lego eyebrow (stuck with PVA wood glue! as a token of the vanished performance. my flatmate was outraged in the bus "People are idiots, they  staring at you jet because you have lego eyebrows" Actually, if you don't know me this statement may seem quite surrealistic but that is the purpose of experimental costume, you generate new rules and create your own reality, living in a world where you can have lego eyebrow or barbie hands on your ears! 

 By Stefano Sini





Beginning of April, I was part of  Main Yard Affair festival in Bar 90, where I exhibited some of my dresses & jewels.  




By Ksenia Gladysheva

This is the Lego dress I was wearing at the fashion week in september

By Ksenia Gladysheva

Find this lego necklace on my online shop 
I like the detail on the skirt, like a lego construction on a human being! 

By Ksenia Gladysheva


People often say to me "I love your creations, but that is very you, no-one expect you can wear them. Sara proves the contrary, she marvellously wear my jewels, appropriate them,  styling them perfectly with some original and quirky accessories from other up to date designers.  
@saraisinlovewith
On theses pictures she is wearing my "barbies accessories necklace" with toothpaste sunglasses! 
Sara: "I don't think you can fit more cute details in a single necklace than this Barbie necklace does" 

@saraisinlovewith


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