Fashion Illustrations // Eris Tran @eris_tran
Photography & Concept // Viktorija Pashuta
Creative Direction & Styling // Øye Decova
Art Director // Roberta Hall
Model // Daria Pershina @ IEG
MUA // Sean Harris
Hair Stylist // Victor Mendoza

Words by Sonam Naidu

Once in a while  Los Angeles-based fashion photographer Viktorija Pashuta creates concept viral photo shoots that gain worldwide exposure and huge buzz in social media. Famous for her conceptualized series ‘What if Guys Were Social Networks‘, ‘What if Cars Were SUPERMODELS‘ and ‘What if Girls Were Internet Browsers‘ published in VOGUE, Esquire, Buzzfeed, Ads of the World, Complex just to name a few  gained more than 2 billion hits online.

This time she has decided to create something a bit more different, a Fashion Mixed Media Project DOLLZ exclusively produced for the cover story of BASIC magazine, #VibezIssue.

Viktorija explains,“This project is very unique as I am not sure that anyone else has ever created something like DOLLZ. The whole concept was based on the vintage paper cut dolls that were popular when I was a kid. And I thought to myself ‘What If I take it a step further by enlarging paper illustrations, cutting them out and putting them in front of the real model?’

She the continues,‘Inspired by RESORT Collections 2017 from Runway shows of renowned fashion houses (like CHANEL, GUCCI, LOUIS VUITTON and MOSCHINO), I came across on Instagram a very talented artist Eris Tran and then asked him to turn iconic runway looks  into fashion illustrations. That was the first step. Once the illustrations were completed – we needed to somehow print them out in life size. This is where it was so crucial to work closely with project’s Creative Director & Fashion Stylist – Øye Decova. Øye in turn had to do a series of complicated calculations and measurements, making sure all of the cutouts would be printed in a proper size for the model. It was a layered process of cutting and gluing pieces to achieve the effect we were looking for. We are talking here about hours, days of work. I believe it took us about a month to prepare everything before the shoot. And then there is also detailed post-production and image coloring”.

Some of the looks were also accompanied by ‘real’ items, like scarves, jewelry, shoes, stockings. The project combined all of the elements:  fashion, art, photography, crafts, collage, copy writing and post production making it a true mixed media masterpiece.

“Imagine – continues Viktorija, to have cutout paper GUCCI bags and paper Moschino hats to play with,  the whole team felt like we are on the PlayGround. It was awesome to feel like a kid again and that’s what fashion is for. To me fashion is a beautiful fairy-tale that inspires, gives hope and reminds you it is never too late to DREAM‘.

GET A PRINT COPY HERE http://basicmagazine.bigcartel.com/product/basic-dollz-cover-vibez-issue