Musa, aka Trasherella, creates wearable art out of trash. She contacted me after seeing my garbage bag fashion shoot and I ended up doing a really fun shoot featuring some of her whimsical Xmas outfits.
I had a concept for creating a giant petticoat out of piles of clothes and so I had to get her to model for me. Leading up to the shoot she asked me if I had a trench coat. I had no idea how she was going to incorporate a trench coat into the concept, but I brought a few belted coats with me. It turns out that the idea of a petticoat just wasn’t registering with her. It’s understandable, it’s not something you wear every day. And every time I said “petticoat”, she was hearing “trench coat”.
Once we sorted out the confusion at the studio, we got to work. I needed her to wear something that would drape over the pile of clothes. Being the resourceful artist she is, she took a queen sized black polyester bedsheet and tied it into a dress. It looked so good that I had to take some pictures before we built the petticoat. Here’s what you can do with a cheap sheet and one light…
Then we started constructing the petticoat. I put her up on a short ladder and used chairs and boxes around it to give it shape. Then we just piled it with sheets, clothes, and jackets we had brought. The idea of using the black dress just wasn’t working as planned. We tried some topless (not included in this gallery), and then settled on a corset. In the first images she was too high on the ladder and the petticoat didn’t fit around her waist like I wanted, so we brought her down a bit and rounded it out a little more. When you try something for the first time, it’s always a learning experience. I’ll do this again sometime in the future, but I’ll construct a frame to provide a better petticoat shape. Take a look and see what you think of the idea.
