Creative Sugar Issue 7

CREATIVE SUGAR

THE FALL ISSUE

D E C E M B E R 2013 - A N E M E R G I N G A R T I S T M A G A Z I N E

2 Winter 2013 CREATIVE SUGAR

COVER Photo by JP Greco

More images on page 20

CREATIVE SUGAR Winter 2013 3

Creative Sugar

Issue 7Editor-in-ChiefSabrina Scott

Copy EditorMarilyn Recht

Style EditorSherah Jones

StylistsAlexander BrooksAlex No

PhotographersDrew LenaleJP GrecoJoseph GalloRaisa KanarevaSam Bynes

WritersJason StonekingJeff GrunthanerJP GrecoKellyn LappingaMark Blickley

Makeup ArtistsLillian JonesAlex No

Graphic Design Sabrina Scott

© 2013 Creative Sugar Magazine

All rights to art, words, photos, design and copyrights are the property of the Artist. All work in this publication may not be used without the Artist’s consent.

New York, New York

Contact:[email protected]: 1-888-669-5513 web: creativesugarmagazine.netfacebook.com/creativesugarmagazine

F R O M T H E E D I TO R

E D I TO R- I N-C H I E F

Happy hol idays! It ’s my pleasure to bring to you our

December issue as we continue to feature emerging

art ists in NYC. We are also introducing the work from

our Russian fr iends, Alex No and Raisa Kanareva. They

are contributing their fashion concepts to our humble

z ine because Creative Sugar offers a platform for the

freedom of expression that is nonexistent where they

are from. Al l the merrier.

Enjoy!

4 Winter 2013 CREATIVE SUGAR A

RT&

CUL

TURE

GETRUDE ARTIST SALON 6BY JEFF GRUNTHANER

ARTIST JEANNE WILKINSON 8 BY MARK BLICKLEY

DARK CINEMA 12 PHOTOS BY RAISA KANAREVA

NOTES FROM THE PARIS UNDERGROUND 18BY JA S O N S TO N E K I N G


CUL

TURE

BUSHWICK STREET ART 20

BY JP GRECO

TAKE ON FILM 34

BY JOSEPH GALLO

DESIGNER ALEX ULICHMY 38

BY K E L LY N L A P P I N G A

D E S E R T F LO W E R 42

P H OTO S BY D R E W L E N A L E


new york is not paris: gertrude’s Salon for the 21st centuryby jeff grunthaner

Founded in 2012 by French-born Kenneth Schlenker, the Gertrude salon takes its inspiration from the Parisian salons Gertrude Stein held sway over in the 1920s. Thankfully, Gertrude events have cast aside all pretense of appearing like a 1920s salon, and the main characteristics they share with the great experimental Modernist are innovativeness and the capacity to realize an easy, relational atmosphere. The creation of conversational proximity between viewers, artist, and the artwork on display—an experience made possible by that fact that guest lists don’t exceed a select number of persons—sidesteps the jargon that often interposes itself between artists and their work. When I attended Gertrude, the artist Nobutaka Aozaki spoke about his own art—a singular experience in a world where artistic cache still follows upon personal inaccessibility. Even were this artist less communicative (Mr. Aozaki is very sociable), Gertrude’s intimate setting readily lends itself to Q&As.

The Gertrude salon that I attended—titled “From Here to There,” curated by Heidi Lee—took place in a penthouse near Cooper Union. During the hour-long period allotted to the salon proper, Aozaki pointed out how his work was influenced by Duchamp, Warhol, and Koons. This was easy enough to determine for any trained eye. But his work also had an émigré feel about it, like alienation become Pop, which went largely unaddressed. In one series of works, compactly hung on a large wall, bags of potato chips were painted over in exactly the same colors that they had been manufactured to display. The overall effect was something like preternatural growths mushrooming from a wall, industrial materials transformed into little pregnant bellies. The eeriness and alienation embodied by these works—which were not hung to their best effect—passed unnoticed.


new york is not paris: gertrude’s Salon for the 21st centuryby jeff grunthaner

The most significant works that Aozaki showed were also the most deskilled: an array of plastic Starbucks cups, each with a different misspelling of the artist’s name. They were less like souvenirs than ready-made testaments to the cultural ignorance globalism breeds. This form of work—the artistic labor of which involves living in NYC as a foreigner—invoked a cluster of different interpretations, but was ultimately contextualized so that personal anecdote was given prominence. Someone asked Aozaki why he had only used transparent cups. Aozaki replied that he liked iced coffee and that that was how Starbucks serves it. At the end of the hour-long event, I won a raffle where Aozaki was supposed to draw my portrait. True to his style, these portraits were magic-marker drawings on plastic bags already adorned with iconic black-and-yellow happy faces. (Unfortunately, the management of the establishment where the salon was held that night ended the event before I could sit for my portrait.) Leaving Gertrude with a physical memento isn’t the point, however. The salon is designed to heighten viewers’ engagement with an artist’s work. And I certainly feel better

acquainted with Aozaki’s art than I would have had I looked at it in a conventional gallery setting.

At a time when it seems galleries are becoming irrelevant, if not extinct, in the face of web-specific ways to collect, ventures like Gertrude may very well offer a model for exhibition strategies suited to a digital world. Being pop-up exhibits where both artist and curator are present, they can readily present works to both connoisseurs and collectors with all the excitement of opening night. What could make this scenario great is if works are shown that can’t be exhibited in other ways. (One can certainly imagine art events tailored to the duration of an hour, in a particular setting.) Speaking unreservedly, I had a marvelous time at Gertrude, largely for its social atmosphere and for the way in which works were presented. Gertrude salons are tailored to emergent tendencies in the art world today, and are easily going to become a staple of NYC nightlife.

P H OTO S C O U R T E S Y O F S A LO N


Jeanne Wilkinson is a Brooklyn-based mythologist often labeled painter, digital collagist, mixed-media specialist, time-based artist, fine arts photographer, and writer. Her content and form are as diverse as the vehicles that deliver them. Wilkinson’s con-structs have been screened as videos at the Brook-lyn Academy of Music and read as essays on Nation-al Public Radio. This past fall she participated in and curated Video By Night at Manhattan’s Creon Gal-lery, and her video, “An Accelerating Decline,” was selected for the Brooklyn Arts Council film series At Land and Sea. This month her work can be viewed at the Performing Arts Exchange’s (PAX) Fridge ArtFair: The Miami Popsicle Project.

Wilkinson grew up at the unsullied edge of Lake Superior and has extended that edge up the two flights of stairs to her downtown Brooklyn studio on Livingston Street. When I entered her creative work/play space, my eye immediately settled on a circular floor shrine in the studio’s far right corner. This circle consisted of painted wooden blocks sup-porting gesso-coated plastic animal figures. Each animal faced the shrine’s centerpiece altar.

The altar’s content is ephemeral and ever-changing, reflecting Wilkinson’s current concerns and appre-hensions. That day a found raccoon skull nested as the altar centerpiece, echoing Wilkinson’s preoccu-pation with the fragility of animal life in our environ-ment. I couldn’t help but think of this Livingston Street mini-Stonehenge as a shrine to this artist’s creativity. It might be the visually narrative first cousin to another, classic Brooklyn artwork, Whit-man’s Leaves Of Grass.

Jeanne’s initial artworks were abstract oil paintings, but health issues arising from the oils and turpen-

brooklyn multimedia mythologist: artist jeanne wilkinsonby mark blickley

tine forced her to abandon that media and turn to acrylic paint. This change in materials inspired an entirely new work methodology. She began to pour acrylic paint onto her canvasses, creating a thinly stained presence that was in direct opposi-tion to her previously thick, painterly surfaces. When working in oils, her paintings were com-pletely intuitive and not based on any image, but this new pouring technique led to a fresh con-ceptual twist. Wilkinson decided to make sym-metrical black-and-white paintings of her colored canvasses, which explored and analyzed the color paintings’ abstracted forms. When she presented these two symmetrical works side by side, they of-fered the viewer (as well as herself) a compressed and clearer understanding of her aesthetic intent. It was a watershed decision, as she used those paired paintings to divide her thinking between the intuitive (colored abstractions) and the analyti-cal (their black and white interpretations).

Wilkinson’s journey from abstract painter to time-based media artist—and the multiple disciplines in between—can be traced back to a crisis of simultaneous acceptance and rejection of her work by a prominent Soho art dealer. This dealer’s interest was sparked by Jeanne’s paired symmetrical abstract paintings. Eager to gain artistic recognition and achieve her art school dreams of success, she immediately ordered a slew of large canvasses in anticipation of the support and acclamation of being represented by a top New York City gallery. But before these fresh canvasses had even arrived, the art deal-er’s attitude towards her paintings had abruptly changed from enthusiasm to indifference.

The rapidity and trauma of his surprising dismissal


led Jeanne to a crisis of confidence. Believing she had finally soared over art world hurdles by using her abstract paintings as a catapult, she returned to her studio confused and deflated, at loss for a creative direction. That was when she decided to turn her art establishment dismissal into an oppor-tunity. She surveyed her workspace and made the decision to incorporate previous work and other objects from her studio into dynamic new pieces.

Her journey into collage took many guises. She created scrims on a painted canvas and slipped jewelry inside them. She also made boxed con-structions with abstract and representative aspects that explored an analytic narrative. Wilkinson strove for fluidity through a layering of paint and objects. These boxes developed into paintings that absorbed wood, mesh fabric, and other found objects, creating a collaged canvas as well as functioning as a musical instrument. Viewers could pluck and play the canvas, establishing her art object as multimedia and multi-disciplined. These musical canvasses would one day be transformed into video soundtracks. A major development in Wilkinson’s artistic pro-gression was her creation of “Painted People.” She used Barbie and Ken dolls, as well as other found objects such as plastic toy animals, slathering them with white gesso and streaking them with abstract expressionist paint drippings that employed a Mondrian-like palette of red, yellow, and blue. In Amy Bassin’s photo we can see a Painted Person atop a blue toad riding away from Jeanne’s studio shrine.

What began as whimsical play was modified into a visual narrative when her son, photographer Andrew Keeley Yonda, met the Painted People at

(A B O V E) “S O L S T I C E 1: M A R Y ” J U N E, 2013,

D I G I TA L P H OTO G R A P H O F “S O L S T I C E: T H E S U N

A N D T H E H O R N” I N S TA L L AT I O N

P H OTO C O U R T E S Y O F T H E A R T I S T

(R I G H T): W I L K I N S O N’S S T U D I O I N S TA L L AT I O N.

P H OTO BY A M Y B A S S I N


pathway between these translucent scrims so they can physically insert themselves into this visual pulse, sometimes wearing headdresses designed by the artist. Viewers literally become part of the video presentation through their wanderings amid the two projection screens.Jeanne creates a 21st century mythic tradition that is an appreciative extension of the ancient art forms our ancestors once used to celebrate and transfer information and emotions through imag-ery and dance. This audience scrim participation is often filmed by Wilkinson, thus creating a fresh layer of expression and experience that functions as both a record of the event, and an artwork in and of itself. When asked to define her personal aesthetic, Wilkinson responded by employing the mytholo-gist’s tool of integrating a surrogate culture’s lyrical canon to interpret the present. She offered up the text of a translated Portuguese song, “The Waters of March,” by Antonio Carlos Jobim :

A stick, a stone, it’s the end of the roadIt’s the rest of a stump, it’s a little aloneIt’s a sliver of glass, it is life, it’s the sunIt is night, it is death, it’s a trap, it’s a gun

The oak when it blooms, a fox in the brushThe knot in the wood, the song of a thrushThe will of the wind, a cliff, a fallA scratch, a lump, it is nothing at all

It’s the wind blowing free, it’s the end of the slopeIt’s a beam, it’s a void, it’s a hunch, it’s a hopeAnd the river bank talks of the waters of MarchIt’s the end of the strain, it’s the joy in your heart

her Brooklyn studio. He suggested she take them on their upcoming car journey beginning at the Colo-rado mountains and ending at the Pacific Ocean. Jeanne credits her son with the creative focus that turned their Western sojourn into a Painted People travelogue. Andrew’s straightforward photographic tableaus of the plastic figures battling the mysteri-ous Western landscapes seemed to turn these color-ful creatures into 21st century pioneers, struggling to adapt themselves to primal landscapes far from the urban habitat where they were conceived.

This Painted People photographic collaboration with her son, “Western Walkabout,” was her introduction to Photoshop. While using it to crop and enhance color, Jeanne realized the immense opportunities this digital program offered. Her first digital collage was the series “Flying,” in which she took photos of the Painted People at both Brooklyn’s Prospect Park and Lake Superior and juxtaposed these photo-graphs with her paintings. Wilkinson asserts that this photomontage “clicked a switch in her brain” that has remained in an upright position these past seven years.

Since that first Western foray, her Painted People have undertaken numerous expeditions that she calls “vision quests.” The photograph “Freewheel-ing” is an example of a quest taken from her Night in the City series. This was my introduction to her mythological work and I immediately selected it for a show I curated, Virtual Fantasy. I interpreted this digital collage as a spectral anthem to urban hedo-nism. Illuminated by the neon lighting of downtown clubbing, a spirited warrior searches the streets to pillage for animate and inanimate booty. The hel-meted pillager navigates the streets upon the back of a giant horned toad whose skin oozes a steady, massive stream of hallucinatory bufotenein that pulls the viewer inside the drugged rider’s psyche-delic cityscape.

While working on digital collage, a friend introduced her to the program After Effects, and she realized how time-based work could record her visual trans-formations of colors, forms, and shapes by utilizing sequenced movement. Jeanne made videos of her paintings and drawings into a dreamlike pictorial flow she titled “Animated Abstract.” At present, Wilkinson is creating new video artworks she calls Cloud Tunnels. She streams differing images onto two large hanging scrims of translucent fabric, using multiple projectors on opposite sides of the room that operate on different time sequences, in a con-tinual loop. Audience members are invited to walk a


S U B M I T YO U R A R T !

I N F O @ C R E AT I V E S U G A R M A G A Z I N E.N E T

S E E K I N G S U B M I S S I O N S F O R T H E N E X T I S S U E!


DARK CINEMA

R A I S A K A N A R E VA

P H OTO G R A P H E R, R E TO U C H E R

A L E X N O

D E S I G N E R, S T Y L I S T, M A K E U P

A R T I S T, H A I R S T Y L I S T, M O D E L


DARK CINEMA

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14 Winter 2013 CREATIVE SUGAR14





by Jason Stoneking

The Underground? Really? One could say there’s no such thing anymore, in these times when “street artists” are selling in the biggest mainstream galleries. In Paris, we’ve grown accustomed to tales of cinema buffs

screening cult films in the catacombs, or art history students sneaking through the sewers to access historic buildings and surreptitiously restore their clocks. It’s easy to assume that all the underground art is now officially overground. But not everyone down there has crawled out into the daylight to cash in on their stories just yet. It turns out the old-school, criminally death-defying tradition of subway graffiti is still alive and thriving in the tunnels beneath the city. One young graffiti writer, who goes by the name Zikwo, recently agreed to talk to me on the condition that I wouldn’t use his real name, or say exactly where I met with him. I was surprised, though, to learn that one of his favorite entrance points to the Paris netherworld is eerily close to my apartment.

Zikwo arrives with an impressively detailed map, and knows the maintenance and security schedules for most of the train lines. “You either make it a part of your life, or you get caught,” he tells me. The RATP, the Parisian metro transit authority, employs their own security force, complete with guns, nightsticks and attack dogs. They’ve already caught Zikwo once, and they’re famously unkind to repeat offenders. Before his arrest, Zikwo used to wander the tunnel system all night, browsing the stylistic differences between others’ tags, and exploring just for the fun of it. But these days it’s all business. He makes detailed plans to tag one or two specific locations, and gets out within two or three hours, max. His list of supplies is short: a pair of gloves, something to hide his face from the cameras, shoes with rubber soles (in case he steps on a rail, or in some charged water, while running). He points out not to overdress, as the tunnels are always hot, especially near the train depots, where temps can

Notes from the Paris Underground

get into the hundreds. Once the trains have stopped running for the night, Zikwo slips into the tunnel system and waits. For a while, he just hides in the dark, drinking a beer he’s brought with him, listening carefully for any mysterious sounds that might echo through the tunnels and tip him off to some unanticipated work by a maintenance crew, or a surprise change in the security schedule. He explains that however well you prepare, you never really know you’re safe down there.

The most important thing to bring, he says, is your camera. Documentation is crucial because the shelf life of a tag is so short. Most writers now photograph their work to post on Internet discussion forums. A camera is also good to have with you if you’re cornered, he adds, because you can ditch your cans and pass yourself off as a tourist or journalist, which will land you less legal trouble than if you were caught tagging. He cautions me to always put my memory card in my sock before leaving, because the cops will erase your photos if they grab you at the exit.Zikwo happily furnished some of his own photos for this story, saying, “If you write graffiti you’re proud of what you do.” He used to think of himself strictly as a vandal but recently came to peaceful terms with the phrase “graffiti artist,” having decided that he cares about the notion of beauty, and also about the traditions of the form. He respects the accomplishments of his predecessors, and honors their unspoken rules, never going over the work of a more established writer. Discussing his style, he says that he is partial to chrome and black lately, but he’s quick to clarify that he isn’t the first to do it—only another in a long lineage. Among his early influences, he cites NYC’s famed 156 crew.

But if he wants his tags to be seen, why only work in such dangerous, illegally accessed locations? For starters, he tells me that a certain amount of danger is “part of the game.” Your contemporaries are your audience. And they can tell a lot about you, not only


from your style, but also from where, and how far, you’re willing to go. It helps separate the serious participants from the newbies just looking for an easy target to tag. And there’s also a historical conversation in these tunnels. French subway graffiti has its roots in a series of reactionary clashes between taggers and the RATP.

Zikwo tells me with great pride about some early victories scored by the Parisian graffiti writers of the ‘80s who take credit for forcing the RATP to abolish higher-priced “1st class” subway cars, by mercilessly tagging them until nobody wanted to ride them. He also enjoys telling me about the time an army of writers tagged the entire station under the Louvre to make a point about the beefed-up security at high-priority stops. When I ask about the most daring tag he’s ever attempted, Zikwo reminisces fondly about the “saut de rails” (rail jump), a stunt in which writers jump onto the tracks alongside a moving train to tag it as it pulls into a station. They have to time it just right to avoid trains pulling in from the other direction, keeping their attention on the electrified rail the whole time.

Between the trains, the rails, the dogs and other perils, Zikwo says that an average of one graffiti writer per year doesn’t make it back to the surface alive. He also says that most writers eventually move above ground, after paying their dues in the tunnels, and this doesn’t seem to bother him much. Zikwo himself is currently taking a break from the scene while he attends some university art classes. He says it’s inevitable that underground culture is ultimately embraced and adopted by the mainstream. And as he’s telling me this, I recall that a few weeks ago I ran into JonOne, founder of the 156 crew, painting the windows for his opening at the posh Agnès B. space in Paris’s upscale 7th arrondissement. Maybe not quite as street as the stuff he did to earn his stripes, but it sure beats dying on the rails.

ABOVE AND MIDDLE RIGHT: PHOTOS COURTESY OF ZIKWO

BOTTOM RIGHT: JONONE BY LESLIE MCALLISTER


B U S H W I C K , B KS T R E E TA R TT H R U T H E E Y E S

O F J P G R E C O


B U S H W I C K , B KS T R E E TA R TT H R U T H E E Y E S

O F J P G R E C O













W I T H S U M M E R C O M E S H E AT, A N D T H E N E E D F O R R E L I E F

L I K E TA K I N G T H E LO C A L T R A I N J U S T TO S O A K U P A/C

S M O K E I N T H E S T R E E T F R O M T H E B B Q A N D W E E D

T H I C K G I R L S S H O W I N G S K I N I N B I K I N I S AT T H E B E A C H

J O H N N Y P U M P S B R I N G C O N E Y I S L A N D TO T H E S T R E E T

L I T T L E K I D S I N W I F E B E AT E R S, S AT M A R S I N T Z I T Z I T S

G E T T I N G G I R L S N U M B E R S A N D I C E AT C I R C O S,

C U C H I F R I TO S O R D E R I N G M O R C I L L A AT T H E W I N D O W

U T I C A I S L I N E D W I T H S M O K I N G D R U M S

W H I L E T H E PA R K S F I L L U P W I T H D R U N K E N B U M S

G I R L S S U C K I N G O N M A M I TA S PA S S I O N C R E A M

G U Y S O N T H E C O R N E R N OT I C E , R E A DY TO S C R E A M

C O P S O U T I N F O R C E F O R T H U R S D AY N I G H T S W E E P S

O L D T I M E R S B I TC H O N H O W T H I N G S U S E D TO B E

S E N S O R Y O V E R LO A D F R O M S U M M E R’S I N T E N S I T Y

A N D F O R T H O S E W H O C O N S TA N T LY W I S H F O R W I N T E R…

K I S S M Y F U C K I N G A S S , A N D L E A R N TO TA K E T H E H E AT

R E M E M B E R I N G B R O O K LY N S U M M E RW O R D S A N D P H O T O S

BY J P G R E C O



TA K E O N F I L MBY J O S E P H G A L L O



A L L F I L M P H OTO S BY

J O S E P H G A L LO


Wisconsin. Chicago. Antwerp. Amsterdam. Paris. Brooklyn. After graduating from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Alex Ulichny found himself in a whirlwind of sorts. He received the Eunice W. Johnson Fellowship right along with his Bachelors degree and found himself with Iris van Herpen and Viktor & Rolf studios preparing Haute Couture and Ready to Wear lines for 2013 seasons. Spending most of his fellowship working in Amsterdam, it’s a bit fitting that his first independent steps into the world of fashion landed in New York, origi-nally called New Amsterdam (before the British seized it). Now, Alex is seizing up New York with his designs. He has won numerous awards and has shown globally. He has worked in the wardrobe departments of Luna Negra Dance Theater, Gilbert & Sullivan Opera Company of Chicago, and has participated as a guest artist on the BBC program SmArt. He has collaborated with various photog-raphers, textile designers, and studio artists. If he sounds like a powerhouse, that’s because he is one. Alex exerts energy and determination with grace. His prolific and meticulous ambi-tion shows on set. He pours himself into his creations, supports and coddles them like each one is his little child. He tells a story with each piece he creates.

“The collection is inspired by the work of Bill Viola and explores the concept of white noise. The garments are made using time consuming, hand-executed sewing technique paired with innovative materials—many taking months to create,” he says.

Alex sees beauty in imperfection, and his work is often rooted in his love of romanticism. It’s hard to believe he created his Spring/Summer 2014 line within a matter of months, or that there are single pieces in the collections that actually took months

T H E I N T R I C AT E W O R K O F D E S I G N E R A L E X U L I C H N YBY K E L LY N L A P P I N G A

“The collection is inspired by the work of Bill Viola and explores the concept of white noise.”

A L L P H OTO S BY S A M BY N E N S



taking several hours to achieve. Again, an everyday piece of clothing is transformed by Alex’s choice of rare vintage lace, with his complicated number “8” embellishment on the back and “team” emblem on the front as well as time-consuming hand work. Both pieces make one hope to see Rihanna in them at her next gala, just to see if she’s really that real “fashion killa.”

I chose to use the term “powerhouse” for Alex because that implies a hidden fire within a col-laboration or team. Yet Alex also seems gentle; he carries himself with grace but also an air of gentle romanticism, which is translated into his work. His demeanor is composed, especially under pressure. Most designers would have multiple breakdowns on set at any misplaced fact or unorganized aspect that goes wrong. It’s the nature of the business. Alex, on the other hand, when faced with a model issue that could sabotage the entire shoot day, keeps a straight face, uses a calm voice and simply asks me. “Can you please take care of this?” while continuing a conversation with the photographer about where he grew up.

to make. It’s this dichotomy that creates the awe surrounding his collection. In the buzz on set you could hear the words, “refreshing” and “inspira-tional.” It was a defined “this is what we do it for” moment. Alex Ulichny is an innovator in fashion. “You can tell he does it for the art, the originality, and not for the trend,” said one of the interns. The intricacies of these pieces are astounding. As I prepared for the shoot with Alex over Skype, I could see the detail within the images he sent, but it’s nothing compared to seeing and holding them in person. His use of plastic strips, a simple construction material meant to make everyday life easier, look like feathers when collected together. While “Ready to Wear” is definitely not the first category you would place ‘White Noise” in, the most impressive part of his SS/2014 collection is the elements of casual. Creating a sports jersey out of lace and emblems, constructing a top out of vinyl, and having multiple pieces using plas-tic aesthetically are just a few examples. Where Alex’s line identifies as couture comes in its minor impracticalities. For example, his piece “white dress” is 35 pounds. If Alex wasn’t so nice and the models weren’t excited by his work, they would have probably left the set and run for the hills. You could see the pain in their eyes when we brought over a mask for them to wear. Kayla, one of the models, actually fell in Alex’s 7.5-inch platform wedges because she couldn’t see with the mask on. Alysha, another model, had to take a break after the “white dress” look; later, we had to lay her down to get the blue vinyl bell bottoms on her. But while there is impracticality, there is also adaptability. This collection can be considered couture on one spectrum and ready to wear in another. The pieces are simple in their concept and made complicated by material and design. A great example of this is the adaptability seen in “white dress” and “lace jersey with embel-lishment.” “White dress” is simple in form as a recognizable standard dress pattern but weighs 35 pounds heavier than the normal garment. It is cre-ated using almost 40,000 plastic strips, which are individually attached by hand in a specific pattern -- taking hundreds of hours to complete. His “lace jersey with embellishment” takes the current sport wear street trend to a whole new level. It is made of vintage silk lace from the ‘40s, which is no longer produced. The process to make the lace is also no longer available. Layers of the lace are sewn together by hand, and the embellishment is also sewn by hand using a special technique,



DESERT FLOWER


DESERT FLOWER

P H OTO G R A P H E R: D R E W L E N A L E

M O D E L: S AVA N N A H L . W I T H FA C TO R M O D E L S AT L A N TA

S T Y L I S T: A L E X A N D E R B R O O K S

M UA/H A I R: L I L L I A N J O N E S

P H OTO A S S I S TA N T: D I A N A S A N C H E Z


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Creative Sugar Issue 7