London hasn't seen a proper masked ball for a while, but charity The Elephant Family will reverse things on 9th July with a fundraising event entitled The Animal Ball. Inspired by more famous extravaganzas such as Truman Capote’s Black and White Ball held in 1966, the event will take place on the lawns of Clarence House.
The 600 guests - all wearing masks inspired by endangered animals and created by fashion designers and artists - will then move on to Lancaster House where an indoor jungle with live music by Jools Holland and his Rhythm and Blues Orchestra awaits them. The night aims to raise over £500,000 through ticket sales and an exclusive silent auction of The Lancaster Collection featuring one-off animal sculptures by leading artists. The funds raised on the night will power a pioneering partnership between Elephant Family and Habitat for Humanity.
The fashion designers involved turned up last Monday in London for a masked preview of the event during which each of them donned their own masks. Among them there was also knitwear designer Laura Theiss.
Born in Lithuania, Theiss studied in her home country, in Germany and in the UK where she was awarded a BA in Fashion Design from London's Central St. Martins in 2009. Since then Theiss has been developing her own collections, while designing for prestigious private clients.
Theiss’ designs offer structural and patterning potential: the designer creates new juxtapositions of shapes and fabrics by folding, layering and twisting the material of her dresses and opting for an unusual mix of colours, coming up with high contrasts, interesting volumes and sporty but sensual pieces.
Theiss set to work on her mask keeping firmly in mind the animal theme and photographs of glamorous extravaganzas such as Count Étienne de Beaumont or Charles de Beistegui’s lavish fantasy balls with their guests in amazingly detailed sumptuous attires designed by the world's greatest couturiers. Yet the inspiration for her hand-crocheted butterfly mask came from a different, though equally irresistible illusion, Loïe Fuller and early hand-stencilled silent films.
Moving fantastically coloured phosphorescent swaths of silk attached to a pair of hand-held wands, Fuller created iconic dance movements characterised by sinuous weaving and spiralling movements that called to mind the shape of flowers and butterflies.
The dancer indirectly inspired experimental black and white films hand-coloured in bright and vivid shades and featuring the butterfly theme, from Gaston Velle's La peine du talion (1906), with its butterfly collector trying to catch vaudeville dancers in colourful outfits, to Les Papillons Japonais (1908) by Segundo de Chomón, with its multicoloured human butterflies flapping wings on the screen.
“Metamorphosis is the main theme of Segundo de Chomón's short film, but it also connects my project to an endangered species, the Monarch Butterfly. The Greek name of the Monarch Butterfly means 'sleepy transformation' and evokes the fact that this species embarks on a marvelous migratory journey from the United States and Canada to central Mexican forests where they hibernate in the mountain forests and metamorphose,” Theiss states. “The black cotton I employed in the mask evokes the darkness of hibernation, while the purple metallic yarn, hints at the light breaking into the darkness and at a return to a completely new life.”
Theiss made her mask using a sort of "cumulative process": she hand-crocheted each single butterfly, steamed them, added wire to make them rigid enough, and assembled them one next to the other onto the main structure.
Theiss' cinematic “Butterfly Haute Mask” also hints at the talent, imagination, fantasy and craftsmanship behind costumed balls and early silent films, while remembering the potential wearer that the era of lavish balls may be gone, but beauty and the hope in a better future for our planet and its endangered animal species always remain.
All images in this post courtesy of Laura Theiss
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