Tag Archives: inspiration

Dark unicorn inspiration

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Those of you who have been following my blog for while will have seen the unicorn inspiration board that I posted last year. I’ve been wanting to do a dark unicorn shoot for a while now and have finally managed to arrange it with photographer Jamie Mahon, who’s dark aesthetic should fit the theme perfectly.

I gathered my initial inspiration on a board and I’m excited to see how the ideas evolve from there.

My wardrobe for the shoot is being provided by Eustratia and Richard Ayres and I’m also using some accessories by Sophie Adamson.

 

Pearl blossom shoot inspiration

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I’ve recently been working on a few different types of accessories for Eustratia. When photographer Emily Bailey contacted me about shooting some of my designs I saw a great opportunity to do a chilled out shoot with some of the new accessories as well as a couple of outfits styled in ways independent to any particular collection.

This is the moodboard I created for the shoot.

It will feature a lot of influences from current fashion and my everyday style.

Inspirational photography #2

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Bette Franke by Jeff Bark for Dazed and Confused April ’12. Styled by Kate Shillingford. The editorial captures the special relationship between women and their pets and is a fresh take on the fashion & animals theme.

I love this set and wish I had such beautiful surrounding for the bedroom shoot I did a couple of months ago (which I should hopefully be able to show you soon).

Artist spotlight: Lost Fish

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I’ve been thinking about getting some t-shirts printed for Eustratia and have subsequently been working on my illustration again after a long break. I don’t have any finished pieces to share yet but I thought I’d feature some of my inspiration. I got the dark inspiration book for my birthday a couple of months ago. It features a plethora of interesting artists, many of which are worth featuring but the one that appealed to me the most has got to be Lost Fish.

LostFish (Elodie is her real name), was born in 1983 in the south of France.

Self-taught, she began her creative development as a freelance character designer, but quickly turns to an artistic universe, creating digital paintings.

Her influences are mostly classical, inspired by the Flemish painters and the art of the 19th century, both in painting and photography, she draws mostly strange and sometimes disturbing girls, half woman and half child.

A selection of my favourite pieces from various sets:

I love the doll-like features, period clothing and surrealist elements as well as the way the hair as been drawn. I also find the colour schemes very pleasing.

Follow me more!

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I’ve recently expanded my online profiles by joining Instagram and Pinterest. I’m enjoying them both and finding them useful for capturing new images on the go and categorizing existing ones.

My instagram username is aestheticconratiction if you’d like to follow me. I make an effort to photograph things other than my face and food when possible.

Pretty much everyone has instagram now but I have had a couple of people ask me about Pinterest. A question that came up was if I found it too similar to tumblr. I thought this was an interesting one as I had a similar concern before I decided to join. I actually think they work really well together and compliment each other. I come across images that I like on tumblr all the time but in the past it was a bit of a pain to find a specific image again if I hadn’t saved it. Now I have Pinterest, when I come across an image that would be useful/inspirational for something specific, I can just pin it to the appropriate board!

My user name is eustratia if you’d like to follow and I’m having trouble filling up the “my style” board. It’s definitely a board that I want to have but I’m not sure wherther I should post items I already own, style pictures of myself, products I want or just anything that represents me including all of the above.

Hopefully I will decide soon ;) .

2011 Recap

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Though 2011 hasn’t been a particularly great year for me, I feel the last day of the year calls for a recap to say goodbye and welcome the new year. It will also give me something to compare new years achievements to.

So this year I have:

  • Launched my own label.
  • Moved on from just latex to having my own jewellery line and starting production of some fabric garments.
  • Attended various trade shows and fairs, including clothes show live.
  • Had modelling work published in a book, 4 magazines and two calenders.
  • Had design work published in 6 magazines.
  • Walked in 8 fashion shows for various designers.
  • Had my designs feature in 3 fashion shows.
  • Explored my CAD design skills to the point where I feel comfortable producing work for others.

Inspirational images 2011

I wanted to add more to this post and might get the chance to at a later date.

 

Unicorn inspiration

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I’m currently in the process of planning a shoot with Jennifer Byron, featuring a unicorn mask by Tom Banwell. After seeing his black rabbit mask around so much over the past year or so I was quite excited at the idea of a unicorn one.

Tom Banwell unicorn mask, complete with leather eyelashes

I’m not totally sure how much masks suit me so I’m going to make extra effort with the rest of the outfit to make sure it looks good.

When I started analysing the options I realised I didn’t know that much about unicorns and their origin so I decided to read up on them a bit. There is plenty of information online but one of the most interesting things I found was on wikipedia. Though unicorns were fist mentioned by the ancient Greeks, they are not found in Greek mythology but rather in accounts of natural history. Greek writers of natural history were convinced of the reality of the unicorn, which they located in India, a distant and fabulous realm for them. The earliest description is from Ctesias who described them as wild asses, fleet of foot, having a horn, a cubit and a half in length and colored white, red and black. Being from Greece myself I was quite suprised not to have heard this before but then again it isn’t really the kind of this they would bother teaching in school.

unicorn moodboard

I put together a vague board of unicorn-related inspiration but was actually surprised by how little I found that was to my taste. I think this shoot will be a good opportunity to create some unicorn-related imagery and accessories that aren’t overly childish or classic fantasy inspired.

I would like to keep the look with the mask quite close to the original depiction of the unicorn as possible so its going to be all white but I also like the idea of the black unicorn so I may do a second, darker look that I can play around with more.

My favourite items from the moodboard are the origami unicorns, I’d love to be able to make some of these for the shoot (especially a life-size one) but I gave it a try this afternoon and actually found it quite hard. If any origami experts happen to read this, please get in touch!

“Chimera” collection, Winter 2011

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I recently launched the new Eustratia latex/chainmail fusion collection, Chimera. The collection was produced in collaboration with chainmail and metal jewellery designer, Richard Ayres. The name was chosen to reflect the combination of two, very different materials.

The theme of the collection revolves around medieval military and knights while still adhering to aspects of current silhouettes and trends.

“Chimera” Lookbook

Credits:

Images and retouching: David Richardson

models: Victoria B, Biomechanina and Elle Beth

MUA: Mercedes and Sarah Jane Ellis

We also did a bit of a concept shoot before we got kicked off our chosen location!

Items from this collection are now available to purchase on the online store!

All chainmail components were hand made down to each individual link by my partner, Richard Ayres. He is also happy to take on orders for custom and bespoke items so feel free to email enquiries@eustratia.co.uk with any ideas or questions. His collection of metal jewellery and accessories will also be added to the online store very soon.

It was a bit of a rush to get the whole collection made and shot before I left for clothes show live and I ended up waiting to launch till I got back and was able to add items to the shop. I’m quite happy with the way everything turned out given the circumstance, special thanks to David for all his help and support!

Close up shots of the accessories coming soon, along with some more perspex.

For updates, please check the facebook page.

Mechanical Dolls

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Tim walker has been a great inspiration for me throughout the past couple of years I have been meaning to write a post about him including some of my favourite images for ages but have bee a bit stuck for time recently. I have just seen this video from his latest shoot for vogue Italia, Mechanical dolls and couldn’t resist posting it.

Some of my favourite images from the editorial: