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Anika Leila was in elementary college when she first noticed the faces.
“I might vandalize the desks, I’d be drawing on the partitions, my artwork e-book — I’ve a Put up-it Be aware from my secondary college artwork instructor saying, ‘cease drawing these faces — they’re scary,’” laughed Leila.
Now 25 years outdated, the Central Saint Martins vogue design graduate has turned her affinity for faces into an inventive signature, utilizing expired and discarded makeup products to color them on attire, tube tops, skirts and absolutely anything else she will be able to assemble.
“I’ve at all times wished to research folks’s faces — I used to stare as a lot as doable in order that I might be sure that I didn’t overlook,” stated Leila, who grew up in London and would make annual summertime journeys to see her grandmother, a seamstress, in India. “She taught me the fundamentals of stitching. Loads of her work — fairly just like what I do now — was very a lot about freestyling.”
When Leila was 16 years outdated, she purchased her first stitching machine, and across the similar time, the Golden Era of YouTube beauty influencers reached its peak.
“I wouldn’t say I used to be very caught up in that [era], however folks thought I actually favored that stuff, so I used to be given a variety of make-up as items,” stated Leila, who amassed heaps of daring lipsticks and colourful eye shadow palettes that quietly expired within the years that adopted.
Quick-forward to her time at Central Saint Martins, Leila discovered herself in a inventive rut induced by her want to create with out contributing to waste. “The air pollution and waste of the style business are likely to impression people who find themselves from the place I’m from — I didn’t need to be a part of that,” stated Leila, who had beforehand experimented with drawing on paper utilizing make-up, and realized she might paint her clothes the identical approach.
“I’ve gone via coloured mascaras, lip liners, eye shadows — I’m at all times asking my pals, ‘have you ever cleared out your make-up just lately? Do it once more,’” stated Leila, whose go-to manufacturers for portray embrace Anastasia Beverly Hills (“nice pigmentation”), Nars Cosmetics and Kylie Cosmetics.
Leila makes use of the make-up merchandise to create all form of drawings, nevertheless it’s her faces specifically — which vary from wanting terrified, to pensive, to undecipherable — which have caught the eye of TikTok, the place her movies have garnered greater than 300,000 likes.
“My paintings may be very a lot primarily based in my private life and my temper, and I believe that displays properly in what I produce,” she stated. “I at all times get a bunch of questions like, ‘What is that this? I don’t perceive,’ and I’m like, ‘don’t fear — it’s paintings.’”
After graduating, Leila launched her namesake direct-to-consumer model providing a spread of beautified tie-back tube tops, drapey attire and skirts, however her major enterprise proper now could be customized clothes orders and canvases.
“I’m working to exhibit in a gallery, which, hopefully, will occur in 2024,” stated Leila, including that whereas her drawings are certainly a mirrored image of her personal experiences, “seeing much more folks now attempting to know and have interaction with my work, placing their very own notion on it — I really like that.”
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