The costume designer is a key member of the filmmaking team. Their job is deceptively simple (to illustrate through clothing a character’s personality or even their psychology), but the challenge is great. Costumes, too, can tell stories of their own, offering the viewer visual information which complements the story on the screen. Sometimes, a movie […]
Category: Clothing
Liminality and Bizarre Beauty: Doll Sculptures by Virginie Ropars
Virginie Ropars is an artist from Brittany, France. A degree in graphic arts led her to the video game industry, and afterwards she knew she wanted to make things with her hands. Her magical, feminine characters, made of fabric and polymer clay, hover in the liminal space between doll art, sculpture, and clothing design. While […]
Gothic, Romantic Hand-Painted Photographs by Katie Eleanor
Katie Eleanor is a storyteller and photographic artist based in London. Inspired by literature, costume art, performance, and Victorian illustration, her work is dreamy, poetic, and filled with indescribable emotion. She hand-paints each photograph. Wearing powdered wigs, white makeup, and gauzy veils, the figures resemble nineteenth-century monarchs suspended in private states of reverie and despair; […]
Modern Addictions: Surreal Photography by TOMAAS
In “Modern Addictions,” fine-art fashion photographer TOMAAS explores the over-consumption and dependency on prescription drugs. “Over the course of our lifetime, we are likely to be prescribed over 14,000 pills . . . [We] are on the verge of becoming a medicated society,” he explains, describing his inspiration for the series. In these photos, TOMAAS […]
Illustration Meets Fashion: Clothing as Moving Art
Sewing is deeply ingrained into our history as human beings. During the Paleolithic era, early humans used bones to fashion crude sewing needles that they’d then use to sew together animal skins with sinew thread. Eventually, this design was refined, with the first known needle-with-eye dating back about 25,000 years ago. Sewing was done by […]
Tragedy and Dreams in Photography by Monia Merlo
Monia Merlo is an Italian photographer whose fine-art portraits of women wordlessly explore emotion. Through specific location choices and the use of natural lighting, she recreates the dreamy atmosphere of pre-Raphaelite paintings. The selection featured here recalls John Everett Millais’ “Ophelia”; women float in ponds, their bodies mingling with vegetation and dark waters to create […]
The Selfie Apocalypse: Marvelous Mutants by Mothmeister
The artistic duo known as Mothmeister brings taxidermy to life in nightmarishly endearing photoshoots. Combining perished and preserved animals with models dressed up in masks and begrimed clothing, they create Frankenstein-esque humanoids who behold the camera with a shameless sense of pride. The barren, apocalyptic backgrounds provide the perfect settings for the artists to parody […]
Battlefields of Identity: Bryn DC’s Cinematic Explorations of Gender and Power
“Future Fatigue” is a series by photographer Bryn DC that represents the conflict and violence perpetuated by hyper-masculinity and gender inequality. Working alongside feminist artists, writers, and filmmakers, Bryn arranged apocalyptic scenes where the models—dressed up as gang members and renegades—posed in bright, bold defiance to conventional notions of femininity and the male gaze. Makeup […]
Black Blood: The Gothic Glamor of Chris Desabota’s Photography
Note: Contains images that may be considered graphic and disturbing to some readers. Chris Desabota is a Florida-based photographer who creates cinematic images that scrape high fashion raw with the edges of human emotion. One of the series featured here is “Hysteria,” shot in collaboration with the models Gianna Serino and Sami Mitchell. Dressed in […]
Siren: The Spectral and Grim Photography of American Ghoul
Daniel Vazquez (aka, American Ghoul) is a photographer with an enduring fascination for occult mythology and the supernatural. His Instagram is a stunning and haunting collection of images that depict dark rituals, impending deaths, and robed figures stalking through empty fields. In a series called “Siren,” Vazquez shot two specters on the storm-rent shore of […]