Dia de los muertos

by Tania Olive 

Since I met Sue Kreitzman, I have been really inspired by Mexican style, dia de los muertos  & Frida Khalo aesthetic.  For her birthday I wanted to create a performance that epitomise her style & creative universe , between day of the dead, art and halloween, a ritualistic performance between spirituality and paganism.  (have a look at my Frida Kahlo necklace on instagram) 

by Tania Olive 

Day of the dead mood board, how to link tradition and folklore with style & fashion

special mention for the Day of the costume of my designer friend Clara with her amazing barbie butterfly headpiece, follow her work here! 

necklace available on my online shop 

necklace & bracelet available on my online shop 

by Tania Olive 

by Tania Olive 

How to make something cheap looking good?  Just stitch some artificial flower on a 50p plastic skeleton! 

by Tania Olive 

by Tania Olive 

Before Sue's birthday party, Sue's flamboyance in Diane Goldie + my normal day wear! 

Skull bracelet that Sue got from me, and she customised it herself, a meeting point between two creativity.  

Inside my spiderweb! 

By Michele martinoli

Meeting with the delightful and colourful  Twinks Burnett, feel really connected with her work! 

By Michele martinoli

By Michele martinoli

 Sue talking about the day we met, such amazing things happened since then! 

By Michele martinoli

 My costume was a  mexican style dress covered skeletons with flower  crown on the head. I found them in Poundland (2 for one pound) it is crazy the amount of treasure you can find there!

Thanks to the help of the great Eve Zohar. I made a big spider cob web with green rope. and I connected the skeleton hands and costume to the rope to become part and parcel of the installation.  

 Then I hide hide in the gallery some little message with quotation about Art to create a kind of Halloween scavenger hunt. 

By Michele martinoli

 The audience had to  find the messages, and come  to me to say them out loud. each message had a number that corresponded to a little present attached in the spider web that the audience had to find  in the tradition of the offering of the day of the Dead that the member of the audience can take with him.

Always nice to catch up with the amazing Mc Gaffy and Beast  who performed  a psychedelic  & cosmic  performance for Sue birthday. I loved her outfit, a traditional Mexican costume that she pimped up to make it her style! 

Halloween is a great party time in London but you can just not make it all! So I lend my day of the dead dress to the amazingly stylish Vanessa (check her instagram gallery) to go to the Sink the Pink party, by spreading my costume in every halloween party I feel I am a bit there by spirit! 

 My little riding hood costume made with Petita Lechatrose, for the  the Unicef UK Halloween Ball, House of Fairy Tales, The Brief by Buffy Cook was "I don't like halloween so i don't want something halloweennish" I don't want the mainstream red carpet dress, I want something crazy and over the top #perfectbrief So I made this dress based on the notion of the colour red, playing with different tone, material and textures. 

My dress on Buffy Cook next to Gavin Turk! 

Color therapy

by Anthony Lycett 

This dream dress which was created especially for the Chromophilia exhibition at the Saint Pancras Gallery (Camdem) , inspired by my friend Claudia Innocenta's painting is full of mesmerising creatures  between earth and sea (mermaids and fairies  with colourful hair).  

by Anthony Lycett 

The process of creation was more painting than sewing, working on the base  fine art experiment dress (see article on my blog). I created the skirt by adding every day for 10 days layers of paint glitters and rhinestones so the design developed itself organically from a white canvas to a colourful wearable painting.  The bustier was made out of multicolour feathers . 

by Anthony Lycett 

The result is a  synesthesia  between a feeling and colour, the colours of dream impregnated on a garment.  It reminded me the speech of Prospero in the Tempest by Shakespeare "We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep." where the dream become tangible, in French Nous sommes de la même étoffe que les songes, et notre vie infime est cernée de brouillard…it sounds more like theatre character are dress in the fabric of dream and I love this metaphor. 

by Anthony Lycett 

by Anthony Lycett 

For the shoot, with the amazing photographer Anthony Lycett,  (follow him on instagram)  we went to Whistable, a lovely seaside resort of Kent with colourful fisherman house and a lot of charming Antique shops.  

by Anthony Lycett 

by Anthony Lycett 

The idea was to make this hybrid creature emerging from her Kingdom by the sea, like the Annabel Lee of Edgar Poe…but  we've been nearly caught by the tide..and by rhinestones shoes are definitely ruined! 

by Anthony Lycett 

by Anthony Lycett 

By Peter Hall 

This dress in relief as a lot stitched on,  colourful flowers, beads, embroidered little dolls and barbie legs decorated with tulle dress and pink shoes.  it is a potpourri between a Mexican day of the Dead an a kitsch pin up look.  

"Close encounter with the third kind" ring available on my online shop 

By Peter Hall 

This dress have a very different dynamic then the dream dress and conveys more playful woman/child attitude, in comparison with the dream dress, more ethereal,   do I wear my clothes or do the clothes wear me?  

By Peter Hall 

By Peter Hall 

To complete the outfit, I used the hat I made for our Demoiselle de Rochefort drag performance with Luxurioux snacks (picture on my instagram gallery)  and I stitched more barbie dolls on it, nothing is lost but everything is transformed

For the barbie legs, I am not using the real one, but the light plastic one that you find in pound shop. Usually I will be, this is a fake barbie but in this case they are better than the real one to create this "Can Can" effect

From my performance background, I like to create dresses with a narrative, incorporating humans part in a design make it more dramatic, where are theses legs coming from?  To whom they belongs to?   

By Peter Hall 

barbie hands earrings available on my online shop 

barbie head bracelet and ring available on my online shop 

I am wearing a vintage top that belonged to my Grandmother she was wearing in the 70s and a leggings with kitten gave by a friend from the 2010's I love this atomic mix 

By Peter Hall 

By Peter Hall 

girly barbie necklace available on my online shop 

By Peter Hall 

multiple barbie face necklace available on my online shop 

By Peter Hall 

necklace & ring available on my online shop 

barbie face necklac available on my online shop 

Wearing the mermaids necklace I made for Sue Kreitzman

The talented stylist Gianfranco Colla used some of my jewels for a tribal inspired shoot the dolls heads necklace fitted perfectly with the aesthetic (see my tribal costume on instagram) 

 

Last but not least, the brilliant painter Ella Guru recently wrote a detailed article about the painting she made of Sue Kreitzman and me, revealing all the hidden message & her creative process, an occasion to look back at the exhibition last year in Cult Mountain 

=> The article here <=

 Sue is passing the baton to Anne Sophie, her young protégé. She is saying, be bold, be free, and be true to yourself. Express who you are, and don’t hold back. And whatever you do, “Don’t wear beige. It might kill you,” as Sue says." Ella Guru