The Free Spirit
Photographed by Lo Garcia
Origin Story
The duration of my 20s was a battle between these opposing forces of energy and ideally, I would like my 30s to be a journey of finding harmony amongst the two.
For quite some time, I have had an affinity for the story of Alice in Wonderland. The precarious and quirky adventure instantly drew me in. Each and every juxtaposition that would seem nearly impossible in our reality, seemed to be perfectly well in wonderland. There was such confidence in the idea that everything was and exactly where it was meant to exist in time and space, regardless of how peculiar the circumstances.
From a young age, I was drawn to the Mad Hatter’s character. I immediately gravitated towards his garishness and absolute foolery. He seemed so fun and whimsical to me. My persona of the like is a free spirit and similarly, can never sit still for more than a few seconds. She’s colorful, adventurous, open-minded, and overall a bottomless pit of spunky energy. Equally so, she’s impulsive, careless, and rarely fully present in the moment.
It wasn’t until recently that I came to terms with how relatable the Red Queen has been for me as well. She’s decisive, confident, tenacious, authoritative, and likes things to be a very specific way. She lives by logic and believes that every action has its consequence. Much like the Mad Hatter, a lack of patience may often get the best of her. She can be pompous, very opinionated, and have tunnel vision.
The Red Queen or “Type A” side of me is very detail-oriented, a strategic planner, and always requires rationality in decision making. Planning is not her hobby, but rather a duty and necessary survival technique for the inevitable takeover of the Mad Hatter or “Free Spirit.” Once this presence takes the stage, there is no sticking to the plan. She adapts to circumstance and acts solely on intuition. It’s a vicious cycle and needless to say, I’ve always lived by the phrase “Plan like hell, then wing it.”
Creative Process
The following concept information was shared with the creative team:
Creative Team
Creative Director & Producer: Mary Anne Laguerta
Photographer: Lo Garcia
Makeup Artist: Kellie Corbett
Hair Stylist: Keisha Mines
Wardrobe Design: Mary Anne Laguerta
Seamstress: Sonya Phillips
Assistants: Aralynn Robinson, Marvin Joi Robinson, YoWonda Blowe
Image sourced from Biomedical Odyssey
Purpose
The purpose of this project is to portray a conversation between two personas of mine.
The Creative Brief
Inspiration has been drawn from two Alice in Wonderland characters — The Red Queen and the Mad Hatter.
The Red Queen embodies the left brain and lives by logic and precision. She’s methodical and extremely particular. Her image will be predominantly white and should display contained and solid features with “not a hair out of place.”
The Mad Hatter embodies the right brain, full of garishness and absolute foolery. She’s unpredictable and “flys by the seat of her pants”. Her image will be a collage of colors with spontaneous and untamed or unfinished features.
Imagery
In addition to solo portraits of the two, I want to create a portrait displaying a meeting of the two personas. The two rarely act in harmony and in this portrait, they will be taking their first step in “coming to the table.” No interaction is needed, but perhaps the beginning of acknowledging each other’s presence.
Image sourced from Todrick Hall’s Instagram
I’d also like each persona to have a less obvious crossover feature. For example, the mad hatter may have a kind of “scattered” look, but includes a bit of bold or crisp linework. The red queen may have an asymmetrical quirk or feature. Overall, I would love for their looks to embody the energy of the personas, but avoid any obvious symbolism from alice and wonderland such as using hearts, clovers, spades, etc.
Same dual persona idea as Todrick’s, but less cohesion. Models should be extremely different. Todrick’s is more like an “after the conversation” moment when the two find harmony.
Makeup
I wanted makeup for the Free Spirit/Mad Hatter look to be painterly and asymmetrical. It was meant to look as “unplanned” as possible. It was a melody of colors almost like a painters palette and to further that aesthetic I asked for paint strokes on other exposed parts of my body.
I didn’t want the Logic/Red Queen makeup to have any direct symbolism to the alice in wonderland queen such as card symbols
I contemplated getting colored contacts for both of the looks, but didn’t act fast enough. It wasn’t a make it or break it feature, but could have added an interesting element to the looks.
Images sourced from Coloured Contacts
Hair
Designing and Constructing the Wardrobe
Right Persona
The right persona wardrobe was a custom upcycled piece created from six different items I owned. Being that this character has a “child of the wind” persona, I wanted this outfit to seem as if she did a Tasmanian devil tornado spin through the closet. To bring a sense of cohesion to the piece I choose pieces that had similar tones.
Although I made a few sketches for the silhouette, Sonya recommended that we jump right in and start hand tacking pieces on. Every decision me made was purely on whim. It was about how the place felt in the moment and building the momentum as we went along. Hand tacking can be quite tedious so for some of the pieces we used pins to hold them in place and Sonya sewed them on later.
I wanted this piece to have an illusion of bulky volume while still allowing me to be light and flexible.
Left Persona
Since the right persona was going to be full of color I wanted the left persona to be neutral colors and solid with no patterns. Eventually, I decided to keep the entire outfit white. I liked the inspiration images I saw of geometric dresses with large silhouettes. Initially, I thought about creating an additional wire accent piece. We did run out of time, but it was probably for the best because it may have distracted rather than enhanced the look. The one thing I was sure about was that I wanted it to be asymmetrical. You would think that since this dress looks more simple that it would have been easier to construct, but that was far from the truth. I think part of it is that the right persona dress had this care-free element to it so there would be no such thing as “messing it up,” but for this piece we had to be very precise with our decisions. There was more at stake with this piece.
For this outfit, Sonya took my measurements and made a template out of poster board. I told her that I wanted a front and a back piece to act as a “sandwich board” and that I would be completely bare underneath. She created a prototype in a printed fabric. We used some elastic bands to pin the two pieces together. We made some additional minor adjustments and proceeded to make the silhouette in the white fabric. I purchased two types of interface, one foam and one thin and sturdy, which we used to make the top corners of the outfit stand.
Being that this is the “perfectionist” persona, I stitched red thread throughout some of the edges. This feature was meant to play off of the idea that this character is always finding “edits” to be made. I probably should have used thicker thread because it was far too subtle in the images, but it still worked out well.
Shot List
I didn’t have too many details to provide the photographer other than the fact that I wanted a close up of them looking in opposite directions and full body shots to composite later. I wanted leave Lo some room to get innovative with the poses with consideration to the creative brief. The Logic’s poses were power driven while the Free Spirit’s poses were to be playful and free flowing.
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