Eustratia Halloween Favourites and SALE!

Every year, I notice it’s coming up to Halloween on about the 10th of October and decide to schedule an appropriate photoshoot and a “top picks” collage from designs for Eustratia.

This year, I decided to be a bit more pro-active and post my selections early. This gives you guys more time to think about your outfit and also coincides with the mini SALE I’ve just put on for the remainder of the week! (but obviously you’d have to make up your mind quick for that, end midnight on Saturday GMT).

I’m not really into items that I see as tacky, or anything that is specific to a particular character, though I do love dressing up. I prefer to choose items that can make an impressive addition to a costume, but are versatile and can also be used in other situations.

eustratia halloween favourites

Here we have a few examples of items I have incorporated into past costumes but continue to come in useful today.

The Elizabethan Ruff

The latexlace mask

The bunny hood, bunny mask fascinator and bunny ear fascinator

The antler headband

The miniruff trim collar

and the kitty ears.

These are just some easy options I picked to save you looking through the whole website, if you have some spare time though, there are plenty more wonders in the sale section. Harnesses of any type are also a great choice in my opinion. They give a distinctive “tough” look that can also be toned down enough to wear every day, with the right outfit.

If you have something extra special planned and nothing on the site will quite do, I’m always happy to take on custom commissions and I will offer 20% off those until Saturday. That includes crowns, horns and hair covered, sculptured head pieces that you may have noticed in some of my work.

To give you some inspiration, here are some of my costumes from previous years that I’ve been photographed in:

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Jamie Mahon-5418a

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A few of these are a bit old now, but I hope you enjoy looking at them all the same.

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Winter wonderland

I’m late writing this post (as with most of my posts), but I needed to share this magical project.

Winter themes really inspired me this year and I wanted to bring together elements from fairy tales, wildlife documentaries and fashion in a shoot.

This was the second project I shot in collaboration with Katelizabeth photography who came to Manchester for an intense couple of days of almost constant shooting. She did a great job re-arranging the set, directing the models and editing the finished images and was a total pleasure to work with. I’m sure she will be up to great things in the future.

The point was mainly to show off my creations for Eustratia but I styled it with some wintery items from my personal collection as well as some specially made headpieces to complete the look.

_KER6470 a_KER6485 aI bought the props mainly to use in an upcoming show with a similar theme but I think they really made the set, Kate did a great job of arranging them as well!

_KER6499 a_KER6502 a_KER6504 aAnd for those of you who don’t know, this in my beautiful friend, Amber AKA Sapphire Black, if you follow my work you will have seen her before.

_KER6509 aI particularly love this images because of the composition and the fact that it shows the whole set. I had been searching for a new front page image for www.eustratia.co.uk for a while and I decided to use this one.

_KER6546 a_KER6577 a_KER6578 aI also made the headpieces for this shoot, which gave me a welcome break from working solely in latex. I have made antler headbands and bunny ears plenty of times before but the crowns were definitely something new for me and I really enjoyed working on them. I hope to have time to work on more special pieces and props this year. One of my goals is to create as complete an image as possible through my shoots and to keep my personal projects as close to the original idea as possible.

_KER6616 a_KER6621 a_KER6644 aThe wonderful make up in the images was provided by Laura Wilson. She is super talented and I hope to collaborate with her again this year. One of her best qualities is being able to realise somebody else’s vision as well as just her own, I find a lot of MUAs have a problem with this. She can also work well with different styles of make up while still retaining her signature.

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Opulence Collection

Those who follow my work will already be familiar with the Opulence collection that has been showcased that the Manchester Alternative and burlesque fair as well as London fetish weekend as part of the Avalonia fashion show. There is also a wonderful set of photobooth images by Tigz Rice featuring the outfits which can be viewed here.

The official Opulence look book images were shot by the talented Katelizabeth photography who did a great job of realising my vision and adding her own touch without upsetting the balance of the overall feel.

Models Sevensin & Biomechanina

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I’m really pleased with how it all turned out. I was originally worried the weather might ruin it for us and I must admit it was a rather muddy, and at times cold, experience but luckily this doesn’t show in the pictures. I had a great team that made every effort to get the best possible results and if any one of them didn’t believe in the project it wouldn’t have been possible.

I’d like to add a special thanks to Charlotte who isn’t credited as part of the creative team but really played a big part by assisting with pretty much everything and assuring the models’ safe passage to and from the set. She also took some behind the scenes footage which I hope to be able to include in a future post.

An insight into this collection and the influences behind it were published in the last issue of Rebelicious magazine which you can view online here and is also available for free download.

rebelicious opulenceImage: Sevensin by Toria Brightside who also edited together this write up from my interview.

To shop items from this collection please visit www.eustratia.co.uk

The chainmail collar was provided by www.richardayres.co.uk

Images from my second collaboration with Katelizabeth photography are due to be released in a couple of days so keep your eyes peeled! A preview images can be view on the front page of my site!

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