The ” Journallustor’s” hyphenated profession is all about doing more of what makes her happy and drawing more than what meets the eye.
Sharpie-ing away her imagination in the form of some quirky art, Talía wants fashion to be known for its creative talent before anything else and her strokes stand for the very same. Proud of her Mexican roots, the Amsterdam based artist just wrapped up the first edition of her digital campaign about drawing Latin fashion. ” Everyone knows about the history and legacy of international fashion. Everyone knows about Manolo Blahnik. But when it comes to small and upcoming designers, there still exists a need to build stories around them.” says Talía who wants to write and draw more about them.
So has it become increasingly crucial to be able to communicate in more than one way? “This is a crazy time that we’re living in. It’s not only important to be present on different platforms, but the content should also be tailored and dynamic. It’s hard enough to get people’s attention as we are living a visual age in media, so we should take advantage of every form of content as much as we can” is what the illustrator-journalist has to say. Before taking up illustration as a career path, Talía was a full-time writer at Vogue Mexico, post completion of her fashion journalism studies in London. Now she is fully putting into practice her self-generated portmanteau ” Fashion Journallustrator” by playing the role of an illustrator who uses both words and images to tell a story.
“I think a huge advantage of illustrations is immediacy as you can instantly grab someone’s attention and tell your story without asking them to click on a link!” explains Talía on being asked what illustrations do that words cannot. She, however, does not want to give up on either of them. Because words allow us to explore a different side of the story and go deeper into the subject and bring out more details.
“The decision behind calling myself a fashion journallustrator also came from the fact that I loved creating illustrations, but I realized I didn’t want to be just an artist, I wanted something more dynamic that would allow me to keep on telling stories within fashion.”
Talking about the kind of stories she aims at telling; she wants to address issues like the commercialization of the fashion industry, which is leaving less and less room for creativity and experimentation. As a young journalist, she wants to be able to talk more about fresh talents who are often overshadowed by the more ‘influential’ and ‘sell-able’ of the lot. Not a big fan of catwalk shows, Talía is more drawn towards the natural expression of style which she finds in the people walking down the streets. She has a popular section on her web channel where she shares the illustrated version of ” Fashion that I found ( or that found me)” and also an arty avatar of the trends she spots on the streets in the St. Drawing section.
But did things just conspire to make her reach where she is? Not exactly, but maybe yes. ” I always used to draw as a kid!” tells Talía, but she never thought of doing anything with it as it came naturally to her. It was while she was working with Vogue Mexico, happily writing away stories that she thought of experimenting with the idea of a different way to convey the same message. That is when illustration happened. A lot of Skillshare classes and numerous self-learning lessons later, she developed her own unique style of illustrating fashion. Instagram helped of course. She happened to share her first illustration on the popular platform and the responses encouraged her to not stop. It was her interpretation of one of Simone Rocha’s designs.
Elaborating more on her creative process, she explains how all of her illustrations are majorly hand-drawn using thick or thine-line black markers and even charcoal in some cases. She then digitizes them on Illustrator a bit! The juxtaposition of dark lines of varying intensities with eclectic patterns lends a unique touch to her illustrations. Colours are something which amps up the entire mood of her artwork. ” Sometimes it’s just a certain colour that I see someone is wearing,and I won’t be able to get it out of my head.” adds Talía while explaining more about her sources of inspiration.
“I am particularly drawn to “regular” people’s sense of fashion. Walking around the city and watching the way people dress, how they combine colors, textures, patterns, that inspires me tremendously. “Real people” you could say!”
Speaking of her favorite illustrators which she feels makes up for a long list, she adds, ” I am fascinated by the energy of Donald Robertson’s drawings; the same for Christian Lacroix, I used to collect his stationary notebooks like crazy! I also adore Frida Wannerberger, perhaps because she’s the opposite of me, she’s meticulous and she creates the most interesting characters, I have two of her original drawings and they are my dearest treasure.” She is more drawn towards impressionists and is currently obsessing over Egon Schiele.
But would she love to progress into moving image and add a third dimension to her process of documentation of fashion? Yes, why not? animations for her can be an attractive way of telling stories to the audience and it is something she would love to learn more about. In fact, the project she had the most fun doing was about animations. It is called ” The contemporary Fashion Zine”, and she plans to bring back a revamped version back on her new web channel. “We’ll be waiting”, is all we can say. ca
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