Music is not the only detour from fashion. Dudu’s designs heavily overlap into the art sphere. Her outfits can be seen as temporary sculptural works of the body. Her graphics embellish t-shirts and her poetry is written all over jackets and dresses. The color blocking reminds one of modern abstract paintings, so in addition with the softness of her drawings, it creates an eclectic combination. Dudu says that she prefers designing clothes rather than creating conventional art: “[fashion] is an applied art. Clothes are in direct eye contact with the streets, the dream in our brutal reality.“ This is where she gets her ideas from and this is what still inspires her today. Dudu has an extraordinary sensitivity for fashion currants and novelties that can be observed in the streets of Paris and elsewhere. Dudu never dictates what to wear; she always amplifies what is in the air already. Garments designed by Dudu result from the process of destruction; they are usually crafted out of ready-made items. “My creations are a conjugation of desire. [They are] erotic, magic, voodoo.” The conjugation of desire is the big theme, the subtitle of her body of work: “At one point the best way to conjugate is to stop, not to desire anymore. Desire is internal, its very mental,” she specifies. Dudu leaves her desire at the door and waits for the world to tell her what it wants her to create. Her designs are a representation of the chaos on the streets reflected on the human body. Dudu is not afraid to use a mixture of fabrics as well as words and phrases she hears in her neighborhood of Montmartre, in the 18th arrondissement of Paris. We can find French catcalling phases written all around a cutout in a t-shirt, reveling the cleavage. Her works have an undeniable connection to her own body as well as the human form itself: “The differences of bodies give a singular beauty to every being that we are. I love to cultivate these differences.” Since she is an out of the box thinker, calling her feminist would be cutting it short. But the celebration of the individuality of women’s bodies is key to this extraordinary artist.
But how to get your hands on one of Dudu’ designs? Lady Gaga wears a trench coat altered by Vava Dudu in the music video of Bad Romance and has been seen in a black leather jacket with shoes sown on to the shoulders and breast pockets. Peaches is another singer who performs in Dudu’s clothing. These two artists are, although popular, norm breakers themselves. Always on the edge of good taste and surly theatrical and loud. “If people find my clothes uncomfortable, that’s because they are not made for them,” says Dudu. She even has refused to dress the French-Canadian diva Céline Dion. In her world, you are chosen to wear a Vava Dudu original you have to meet certain criteria to make the cut. The most important trait is not popularity or money, but the feeling that is transported by wearing such extravagant pieces: “[I would like to show] utopia, reality, future, the sunlit horizon” all in one and one in all.
Looking into the future of world fashion, there is no doubt that this remarkable artist has some insight of what is coming upon us in the following decade: “I think we are going to wear protective clothes of a second skin nature [maybe] a combination of a mask and a balaclava. Or even being content with a silk negligee, a baby doll nightie or some briefs. Staying almost naked in the eye of the pollution in the world that is forcing us to shut ourselves up at home. Finding our shell in the face of climate change and other things.”
Dudu’s style of art is difficult to describe. She is eclectic and as diverse as it gets. She jumps the borders of art, fashion, music, and poetry just to create something that is in perfectly synchronous.
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header image (c) Vava Dudu
