photo by Nadia Haddad
Stealing beauty
Issue #25
Dark humor and a touch of whimsy define La Voleuse
By Emilie Zanger
Published: September 1st, 2005 | 1:37pm
If you chuckle at the thought of a handbag adorned with chicken-foot leather that’s arranged to look like a tree trunk and surrounded by appliquéd leaves, you’ll probably get designers Stevie Remsberg and Meg Moorhouse, the creative forces behind the accessories line La Voleuse.
“We try to work a sense of humor into everything we do,” Remsberg says. “We like things that have a double meaning that are a little ironic or silly or hopefully not what you’d expect.”
The duo’s first creation was just such a project: a clutch purse made from gutted books. Collaborating on this smart, quirky project back in 2002 helped bring Remsberg and Moorhouse together while they were working at a New York handmade papermill and artist workspace called Dieu Donné (French for “God-given”) and precipitated the development of their accessories line. But they swear that was never their ultimate goal. “[La Voleuse] was originally based on an idea of [a project] we thought would be cool, not ‘Let’s start a fashion company,’” Remsberg says.
But they’ve done just that. They named their company after the French word for a female thief to play against the meaning of Dieu Donné. The current La Voleuse lineup includes a batch of huge, floppy, hobo-style bags that Remsberg and Moorhouse have knowingly dubbed the Thursday Bag, a nod to “going-out night,” when you have to haul your clothes for work the next morning to the bar. There are also the conversation-starting velvet and suede Chicken Foot Bags, which they call “a reformed Goth girl’s delight,” and La Voleuse’s signature item: hand-dyed satin ballet slippers, custom painted with a colorful tattoo motif and the pithy song lyric of your choosing.
Originally based on a pair of vintage heels that Moorhouse bought and painted with a heart and a sparrow, the slippers feature tattoo designs ranging from the classic heart and banner to a thoroughly light-hearted pink ice-cream cone. Though the first pairs sported lyrics by the Smiths —
When asked to elaborate on this, um, dark undercurrent running through their line, Remsberg and Moorhouse seemed bewildered. “It is kind of dark, but we don’t think of it that way. We just find it all really humorous,” Moorhouse says. “[For instance, the] shoes, the ones that say ‘I am human and I need to be loved.’ It’s kind of a dark, sappy lyric, but the fact that you’d wear it on your shoes to express how you’re feeling is kind of funny and self-indulgent.”
—
Check out lavoleuse.com.
Comments
Please login to be able to comment on this article.
more