by Anthony Lycett
French beauty Anne-Sophie Cochevelou eschews typical Parisian chic, instead opting to sheathe herself in doll’s heads, Barbie limbs and Lego bricks. Yet she retains that simple feminine elegance, and wouldn’t be caught dead without a red lip and a pointy stiletto. Proving that any object from everyday life can become a fashion accessory, Anne-Sophie experiments with the creative potential of playthings.
Queen of Kitsch
Anne-Sophie Cochevelou is the 24-year-old who is building a career from playing with Lego and Barbie.
“I’m from Paris, but I don’t have that minimalistic French style. I can’t make coffee. I drink tea. I’m more attracted by bright colours, mismatched prints, shiny materials and over-the-top dresses,” says the softly-spoken Anne-Sophie. She describes her relationship with fashion as love-hate, preferring clothes that look out of fashion rather than à la mode. “I really admire people who are fashionable but it’s just not my interest because I don’t like to follow rules – ever. I like to wear theatre costumes, for example, because they are a bit grotesque.” A performer at heart, Anne-Sophie infuses her thespian code into costume design, performance art and jewellery making, along with a heavy injection of kitsch.
When individuality and irony collide, it looks a bit like one of her designs. Playfully nostalgic with a certain je ne sais quoi, each piece is a uniquely designed handmade creation. Gold and plastic, lace and baubles, there is no such thing as too much fun in Anne-Sophie’s imagination. 78
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Upon contacting Lego for sponsorship and a supply of bricks last year, the quirky creative had an unexpected stroke of luck. Predictably, Lego said no to the freebies but instead offered the young designer an opportunity to create a dress for them to be showcased at London Fashion Week spring/ summer 2014, a dream come true for this uber-fan. “I was telling my friends about meeting Lego and just imagining a big, yellow man at a desk made out of bright bricks,” she giggles. The couture coral-red duchess satin gown dripping with around 5,000 multicoloured plastic bricks took Anne-Sophie a painstaking 350 hours to fashion. “As I was creating something official for Lego, I wasn’t allowed to modify the original design so instead I had to click the bricks in place and glue them one by one.” Influenced by the great designers from her native France and avant-garde English abode in Old Street, London she looked to both Christian Dior and Alexander McQueen for the silhouette, and created her own ‘neo-crinoline’ structure out of metal boning to allow for the garment’s weight and voluminous skirt. The result was a spectacular sight, topped off with a Lego encrusted headpiece, platform shoes and sunglasses because every girl knows no outfit is complete without accessories. You would think she would be sick of the sight of the little bricks by now, but that’s not where Anne-Sophie’s love affair with Lego ends. Performance art meets social experimentation when she invites a live audience to build different incarnations of the dress on her body. The idea that the outcome is dependent on the interaction between herself and the audience is what makes it exciting, and plays to her penchant for one-of-a-kind designs. Starting in March this year and still ongoing, she will be performing at Number 90 in Hackney Wick and various festivals over the summer. She’s even known to take on the role of a bingo caller in her costume. Tickety-boo. Childhood is a theme that is constantly probed and revisited. Anne-Sophie recalls her own childhood, Sunday mornings spent nosing around flea markets with her mother in Paris. “As an artist I saw potential in all these things and I wanted to give them a new life.” She scours charity shops and markets in London to discover found materials to recycle and repurpose. She even has a Parisian charity shop reserving dolls for her, although she has been a loyal customer to them since the age of eight. Having avoided high-street retailers for two years, charity shops are Anne-Sophie’s first point of call for fashion, too. “When I am feeling really crazy I spend ten quid on a dress. After, I just eat pasta for a week. I have got my dress, I am fed.” Toys are an obvious choice for Anne-Sophie, because they are a common reference that all can relate to.“When I wear my creations, people stop me in the street. They always generate positive reactions. I like it when fashion makes people smile, when it makes people talk. I like to explore the link between fashion and emotion.” Although not intending to shock and scare, she admits that her use of doll’s heads can usually create an uncanny reaction. “It can be a bit creepy, but it’s funny at the same time.”
mation about who you are, or, more precisely, about what you want people to think you are. I think with my style I show an image of someone who looks really confident, you create this kind of protection and control the image you want to show people,” she explains. Confident, and of course, elegant at all times Anne-Sophie’s mantra is ‘cycle in heels’. Seeing a disassociation between fine art and human reality, her raison d’être is wearable art, something that can move with the body and come alive. This summer, Anne-Sophie will be part of a group exhibit at St Pancras Hospital in London called The Colour of Dreams, alongside her friend Sue Kreitzman and other weird and wonderful artists. She will collaborate with painter Claudia Bennassai to create a triptych of three dresses representing the sky, the sun and the moon. Anne-Sophie and Claudia are looking to the 1970 French movie Peau d’Âne, meaning Donkey Skin, directed by Jacques Demy for fairytale-costume inspiration. As for sponsorship from Lego in the future, she can only hope that if you build it, they will come. www.sophiecochevelou.com cycleinheels.blogspot.co.uk
“I like to create surprises when I divert the function of an object which is not supposed to be on clothes.”
The Colours of Dreams The Gallery Space, Conference Centre, St Pancras Hospital, 4 St Pancras
Anne-Sophie’s theatricality conversely stems from an innate shyness. “The importance of clothing is how it allows you to stage yourself, to give infor80
Way, London, NW1 0PE From Friday 8th August 2014
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