phew what a week. passei a semana costurando um look. mas dessa vez, era pra mim. eu fiz um look q eu tava ha horas querendo fazer.

Remainders, in Pasadena

anos atras, eu fui numa loja chamada remainders, la em pasadena. a marie jenkins levou eu e a caitlyn cope pra comprar coisas. eu achei muitos tipos diferentes de tecido. um deles era um xadrez roxo e rosa com detalhes verdes. eu achei ele lindo pq tecidos xadrez sao muito comportados, mas esse tinha cores complementares, o rosa e o verde. achei rebelde o suficiente e profundo com o roxo.

 

fig. A - pussy pussy cvnt cvnt drag queen
and weird auntie in the background.

 

A few things I have learned from this look:

im gonna write these in english: I did learn a few things about sewing. I look good in classical patterns and shapes.

I also need to account for time when i want to finish something. Because I based my life in mostly TV and media when I was a kid about what it would be like to be an adult, I feel like I have always been fed that things always workout in the end. Yeah, they don't.

I mean, they do when you do what you have to, most of the times. And part of doing what you have to is to prepare time to make mistakes and figure it out. Every project with new mediums will require a time to get acquainted with the new medium, how it works, how you get into it and how fast. It does take an adaptation period to get there. 

Additionally,  every project will have a crunch week, which is normally the week before delivery. If you have given the project enough time ahead to settle in and test things out, congratulations, you have made your crunch week better. I noticed on this last look I made as well as the previous commission I completed at the end of July. I call it the diamond look. 

The Diamond Look 💎

This was a request by Eric Cmar. Months ago, he showed me a photo of this look worn by Taylor Swift in a promo video for her new EP, Life of a Showgirl. 

I honestly did not know if I could do it, but I took it as a nice challenge. This look not only entailed some serious tailoring and corsetry, but also working on the big center piece jewel possibly using unconventional materials. I was sold.

Initially, I was able to get the corset done in a pretty reasonable time. Typical 3-4 weeks for Henrique hahaha but the jewel was the hardest part. Back in May, I started modeling it in 3D.

The Big Jewel

I modeled the big jewel first in 3D in Blender. I didn't only want to make the right shapes, but I also wanted to make sure the faces reflected out differently, which is why a jewel is so reflective.

Once I made the piece in Blender, I flattened face by face until they were leveled. I then used it as a pattern to cut paper pieces and make a first rendition of the crystal in paper. It worked!

Great. first step out the door. Now I only have 98 left. 

I then scaled it to the correct size and projected the pattern of the faces onto EVA foam (very thick EVA foam I have to add) and glued the pieces down together. It was a little wonky but it worked! I numbered the pieces to make it easier for me to find them and know which ones went together. The paper jewel really helped as a little "puzzle lid" so I could use it as a cheat sheet.

Now, this is where I really got stuck: knowing how to make them reflective enough like the reference. 

I tried a few methods: r

• reflective HTV on EVA 🚫
• reflective HTV on backside of thin plexiglass 🚫
• actual reflective plexiglass but like uber thick ✅

This is a process that took me some really long time to figure out. I actually found some really good quality plexiglass and I was really happy with it, but then I didn't know how to cut it in such specific shapes and glue them together to be able to challenge gravity and stay in place while a crossdressing man wore it and moved around with it on. 

Ended up buying a jigsaw and boy that was a good $45 investment. I almost lost my fingers a couple of times, but listen it worked so well that I was really happy even with only the crystals laid down (even though they had some big gaps between each other). I ended up burning pinholes on each corner of each piece and tying little golden beads to them, like the reference. Glued the pieces to EVA with glue. Stoned the in-betweens with half sphere golden beads. For the base, I bought think felt and glued two parts together with contact cement. Lined it with black fabric and glued/sewed every big crystal on the rim. There were proximately 200 crystals on this look, which made it very sturdy and heavy, which I loved. 

TheBlonds, Fall '23

  this week, I finished another commission and it took a hell of a long time for me to do. 

The problems of making a commission, especially for someone you know well, are never taught in the beginning like the rules of a game is read aloud before people start a game. Each player has a specific position and move in the game, when each will take turns to do something. 

When dealing with clients, no one has set rules for it, so all you can bring is what you are used to, and what you think the rules of being a professional adult are. 

some people think that we can only show partnership when the process is beautiful and the vision is clear. But as soon as something goes bad, we let go of the hand of each other and point nasty fingers at each other to justify the terrible feeling of resentment and frustration we had with ourselves. we let our anger and frustration about ourselves be aimed towards the other because, it's easier to judge others than it is to look at our own flaws.

some other times, we don't really know what we are looking for in a commission. do we want it to be something to please the audience/please the partnership/bring something new with it.

trying to have a successful friendship while seeing each other as ranks of a commission will never make for what a friendship could have been without the commercial aspect. two people can at the most, be friendly and emotionally check in with each other, but when there is no work to be talked about, no work should be talked about. even when the work has nothing to do with each other. it shows people who you really are behind the layer of work when you are not compressed. 

when they start complaining about third party work with each other, the commercial aspect of a relationship starts to not be so important because the layer in which it is discussed is in the ranting layer, which belongs to a personally social layer.

the same is true in other aspects of life, like personal (intimate/family) and spiritual in the religious/corporate aspect. when the first layer of a relationship is religious, members of a same family will see each other as participants of a social gathering more than members of a family. the very self identity of a family changes. the same aspect happens in the nite life. but instead of weakening a family by choice, the nite life community becomes a chosen family.

i have no idea how all this came out of nowhere.