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Category: Fashion

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Bloodmilk: Katabasis

My perennial favorite jeweler, Bloodmilk, has come out with a new collection, Katabasis (from the Ancient Greek for “descent,” meaning a journey to the Underworld). The pieces are inspired by various elements of Hadean mythology, including Lethe, the river of forgetting, Hekate, the witch goddess who holds the keys to the Underworld, Orpheus who descended in order to bring back his doomed bride Eurydice, the terrible Morai who spin and cut the thread of fate for all mortals. Iridescent moonstones and onyx nest within intricate oxidized settings which seem to blend the ancient with the modern, the elegant sparrow claws and bat bones of Bloodmilk’s iconography forming cradles for the jewels.

Jessica’s statement for the Psychopomp ring is touching and lovely:

…the first iteration was meant to serve as a devotional ring to yourself, a declaration of accepting all of the sharp, inky, messy parts of yourself…your inability to mask at all times…your inability to say the right thing when you “need to”…that you can’t quite seem to feel good any day of the week… This first ring meant accepting these things, wearing a ring that meant belonging to all of the parts of yourself, saying “yes” to every little part, no matter how much society says “no.”

Many years later, this newer version of this ring means all of these things, and it also means you have permission to change too, you have permission to face these things and to chip away at any of them and any of them I missed, and you have support too…something to touch and turn on your finger to know you’re not alone, that I believe magic is real and you’re allowed to believe that too, in whatever way that word resonates for you.

It’s my wish that you’re not alone. That you feel safe and protected, whether it’s with this ring or not, whether it’s with the pages of a book, with the kinship of others…with knowing someone else feels the same way and is working on it too, is also just accepting the same things about themselves too.

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Otherworldly Gems by Omnia Studios

Omnia Studios fashions gorgeous, lavish, surreal and fantastic jewelry. Themes of the occult and mythology predominate, taking inspiration from a range of supernatural symbols and iconography, including cartomancy, Puritan winged skulls, the Moirae (Greek goddesses of fate), and Spiritualist planchettes. One of my favorite pieces is the absolutely incredible Charon’s Lantern Amulet, which represents the lamp of the river Styx’s ferryman, containing quartz crystals for illumination and held by two little ghostly hands. Bold, ornate, and baroque, these splendid jewels are perfect for darkly luxurious occasions or as everyday, beautifully odd statement pieces.

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Heavenly Inferno – The Church of Sanctus

The new Heavenly Inferno collection from longtime favorite of mine, Sanctus, is available today at 9pm BST. Featuring bishop sleeves, puffed velvet sleeves, trailing hems, fine lace, corsets embroidered with Immaculate Hearts, in gorgeous shades of red, blue, and green, these pieces are each designed and lovingly handsewn by Lucinda Sinclair. They perfectly blend religious iconography with historically inspired silhouettes, dramatic, lush aesthetic conceptions, and modern ethical garment-making.

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Fine Art and Fashion Design by Hogan McLaughlin

Hogan McLaughlin is an excitingly fantastic, dark, romantic, architectural fashion designer as well as dancer and visual artist. His spidery and highly stylized illustrations, reminiscent of Aubrey Beardsley, are full of elegance, melancholy, and bespeak a world of decadent, spindly, eerie beings with outlandish proportions of garment and roiling, torrential masses of hair. The historical influences in his art and design are gracefully eloquent, and he is wonderful at combining stark, structural silhouettes with the soft, romantic, and flowing.

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Eiko Ishioka

Eiko Ishioka was a visionary and absolutely unique art director and costume designer who died nine years ago, on January 21, 2012. Her work on Tarsem Singh’s films, including The Cell and The Fall, is a large part of why they are so visually memorable. Her operatic, magisterial costumes have an otherworldly quality, fusing Eastern and Western influences, and at the same time seeming to have no referents to existing sartorial styles – sui generis creations that are utterly fantastical. Lush, innovative, and outlandishly dramatic, her surreal designs linger in the memory with all the force of the truly original.

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Masks and Phantasms by Damselfrau

Damselfrau’s enchanting masks, bizarre, gorgeous, totemic, resplendent and larger than life, are reminiscent of some imagined and heretofore-unknown folk culture. These portraits of a fantastical people are often featured with an arrangement of flowers, which also lend their explosive vividness to the ultra-saturated and violently jubilant palette. Damselfrau says, “I have used fine lace, carried by the nineteenth-century Norwegian author Camilla Collett, hair from two-hundred-year-old Japanese geisha hair pieces, as well as everyday stuff, found in the street….I am led by the phantasms appearing in the process of the making and the materials themselves.” I am quite a monochromatic creature personally, so I appreciate the incredible vibrancy and wild color of Damselfrau’s outré creations.

Artist Magnhild Kennedy interprets the moniker Damselfrau (frau referring to married women and “damsel” being an unmarried young lady) as “married to oneself.”

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Ethereal Corruption: The Profane Transmutations of Fecal Matter

Fecal Matter (Hannah Rose Dalton + Steven Raj Bhaskaran) are an Instagram duo who use extreme, transformative makeup and prosthetics to create preciously bizarre, outré, and alien looks, mutating ethereal beauty into something transgressive and disturbing. Their aim seems to be to disgust and enrapture in equal measures, to simultaneously fascinate and repulse. They reside permanently beyond the pale, with a sly sense of humor which seems to parody high fashion. Dalton’s medical-themed image of a white-and-pink, pastel, veiny, flower-adorned, bile-eyed, wounded, sickly, modelesque semi-human being or anthropoid alien is unnervingly brilliant.

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Nuit Atelier

I’ve admired Nuit Atelier since its inception in 2012 by designer Anastasia Ikonnikova. Modern romantic clothing which harkens to historical fashion, “each garment is designed to shroud and strengthen the body, ennobling and mystifying the human form.” Characterized by beautiful draping, luxurious yet hardy materials, satin, linen and gauze textures, it achieves timeless classicism combined with raw, modern edginess. Frothy, frilled white blouses, voluminous bishop sleeves, blood-red velvet gowns, and dramatic black coats and cloaks with mysterious, enveloping oversized hoods. There are also more minimalist basics that are perfect for everyday wear. I could happily construct my entire wardrobe from Nuit’s offerings.

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