Last Tuesday, I met the talented Tiffany Bouelle, a French-Japanese visual artist. A sparkling woman with a strong optimistic and caring character.
Tiffany started her professional life as a stylist. At the age of 20, she worked on fashion week shows and for e-commerce websites of luxury brands. But after a few years, she gave up everything to turn to her true passion, drawing. She became a teacher of plastic arts in a nursery school while trying to enter in the children’s publishing industry as an illustrator.
During an exhibition, his creations are spotted by the artistic director of one of the leather goods brands of the LVMH Group, who proposes a collaboration. Tiffany began to live from her art and now dares to take on painting. In her personal work, women play a central role: through a style with an asserted minimalism, she mixes a number of subjects, sometimes taboo, around female bodies.
What is your first fashion memory?
When I was 4 years old, I was on my mother’s knees watching fascinated fashion shows without really understanding what was going on. It was a huge show! We were in the 1990s, there were no social networks or this multiplication of collections. The budget of the houses was concentrated on the fashion shows. Everything was at stake at that time!
Which women inspire you?
Georgia O’Keefe, for her hermit lifestyle and her relationship with nature; I admire Frida Kalho for her tenacity; Sonia Delaunay, who didn’t lock herself into a single medium of expression, inspires me; and inevitably my mother, who left Japan for a country where she didn’t speak the language, where she made a career as a stylist, notably with Martin Margiela, and instilled in me a rigor that is very precious to me today – you have to get things done!
What do you associate with femininity?
When I was younger, for me it was symbolic. I felt like a woman when I wore lipstick and heels. Today, I would say that femininity is lodged in a way of thinking and interacting with others and the world. I also think that nothing is exclusively feminine. Things are much more complex!
