Vampira vs Elvira (two drama queens)

I´ve found out recently about Maila Nurmi´s death (the finnish woman who created and then played the character Vampira in the 50´s). So long it´s been since back then when she was a star that I almost thought she was immortal....:)

You can see her character being played by Lisa Marie (Elvis' daughter) in Tim Burton´s film, Ed Wood (1994).

Vampira, despite being a bit kitsch (we´re talking about the 1950's, remember) still had that glamourous femme fatale allure of the Hollywood divas. She was a mix of vampire and a witch. Sadly ignored by lots of gothic websites (I don´t usually see any references to her when I read something about Gothic clothing history) Nurmi herself claimed that Vampira's image was in part based on the Charles Addams "New Yorker" cartoon character "Morticia Addams", though she told BOXOFFICE Magazine in 1994 that she had intentionally deviated from Addams' mute and flat-chested creation, making her own TV character "campier and sexier" to avoid plagiarizing Addams' idea. Her image has been such a big influence on the female gothic look that in no more than 4 decades later another "vampira" was born: Elvira. So similiar and often were the comparisons that Nurmi sued Cassandra Peterson (who plays Elvira) for plagiarism. She didn´t win, why?

Much kitscher and less glamourous than the original one, Elvira was a mix between a 80´s goth who´s been caught in the post-punk transition and a Playboy girl who´s decided to dress up like a witch for a Halloween night in her hometown. Obviously, the look was still goth but the the idea was focused in a completely different way. Whereas Nurmi focused on giving her character a quite serious dramatic look, Elvira´s character is just a charicature on itself: big boobs that -I don´t know how- stay half of the way inside that dress (black witchcraft, perhaps? superglue, maybe?), made of the nastiest piece of polyester or lycra. Her hair -that wig that even Robert Smith wouldn´t have dreamed of back in the 80´s- doesn´t help either to give any kind of sophistication....In conclusion, Vampira wasted her time sueing Elvira. Vampira wasn´t immortal, she´s dead now. Elvira is tacky, she looks like a dark hooker.

If you want to know more about Maila Nurmi, check out this link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maila_Nurmi

Some sketches from my first year at fashion college

Here are some sketches I did for my very first gothic proyect....

The drawing is not fantastic but I´m still proud of them...

I haven´t made them yet but I thought it would be interesting to post them on my blog. They are the original seed that inspired me the idea of doing "practical gothic" clothing.

I´m becoming a vampire......help! help!

I am currently doing my final year´s proyect. (My very last chapter of my horrific fashion degree). I could describe it as tiring and stressful, but those adjectives wouldn´t be the exact words to describe the real situation. If you work in Fashion OR still studying, you would have an idea of what I´m talking about...
THE VAMPIRIZING EFFECT OF FINISHING YOUR PROJECT...ON TIME!!

You start to hide from the daylight and the clocks as a very desperate attempt to stop the time or get away from it....Your nights, those precious relaxing moments long time ago, become your working shifts until the daylight appears again. After hours and hours of euphoric work that never seems to end, you start to think you´re immortal but it´s not because your strength but the illegal amount of caffeine that is swimming within your blood veins.
You don´t need to wait long until you start to see the effects on your face: deep purple bags under your eyes, your face (once white, or "yellowy-I´m sick of typhus like" in my case) turns into a pale-translucent shade, and your teeth....yes! they start to get suspiciously more prominent and sharp than usual due to grinding your teeth (an unmistakeable very first sign of a future hysterical crisis, weeping included).
Now, this is what REALLY fashion is about. (Non-gothic fashion too)