Every Look Is a Side of Me
Cosplayers dress as characters somebody else created. I create the character and the clothes — then I step into her. On personas, reflections, and the sides of me that live in my work.
Every one of my designs is a character, and I’m the one playing her.
It hit me one day that what I do is a lot like cosplay — except cosplayers dress as characters somebody else created. I create the character AND the clothes, and then I step into her. The garments don’t exist in any store. The women don’t exist in any world but the future I imagine. And every one of them is a reflection of me.
Rooftop Reign is the queen in me — the one surveying the whole city from above, unbothered. Scarlet Vamp is my dangerous side, all old-Hollywood glamour dipped in the future. Pink Fur Hood doesn’t whisper, she arrives — that’s the part of me that refuses to shrink. And the Blue Butterfly became a whole collection because transformation is the truest thing I know: I have been the caterpillar, and I did not stay there.
Maximalism isn’t just my style, it’s my honesty. Louder colours, louder textures — every persona turned all the way up, because none of my sides are quiet. The future I imagine isn’t colder or greyer. It’s bolder, and these women are already living in it. I just get to try it on first.
My first photo book was originally called Digital Personas. I changed the title, but the truth of it never changed. When you take one of my prints home, you’re not just hanging a fashion picture. You’re hanging one of my characters — one side of me — on your wall. Choose the one you recognise in yourself.
— Kellyann