THE BRAND

"Playing on the innate affluence of the fashion community, I based my fashion brand on a levidrome: MUSSOPO.

 

Mussopo calls out to the higher class, with an exotic euphony that exudes exclusivity. However, when spelled backwards, Opposum reaches a new audience: one who appreciates the mockery of such a label. Opossum reveals the label’s goal of addressing a variety of socioeconomic issues, whilst sticking to a raw and distressed design."

- Zoe Alon

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THE DESIGN

“Opossum 1” is inspired by my passion for recycling fabrics and materials to generate an entirely new creation. Subsequent to taking scraps from a class project, I challenged myself to utilize strips of fabric that featured my favorite accessory: grommets. I began the process of designing a unique blend of denim, cotton, and polyester as a base fabric for the work. Focusing on a variety of recycled pieces, I used shoelaces, ribbon, and thread to tie each of the figures together in various arbitrary positions to generate the geometric shape I was looking for. The action of tying each element onto the denim base allowed for entire creative freedom, in which I could control the flow of the train of the skirt.

When creating the top, I decided to design the panels as a raw corset-style top, which featured soda tab straps. Collecting and tying each tab together was a surprisingly tedious task, but putting maximum effort into my piece was imperative. The final step was creating earrings out of the tabs, as well as styling the look I wanted to achieve with Tamara.”

- Zoe Alon
 

THE PHOTOGRAPHY
“I sought to capture “Opossum 1” in both the studio and on location, modeled by Zoe Alon herself.
In the studio, I isolated the design against a plain background to create a focused portrait while giving me the ability to seamlessly add elements of her design onto the photograph itself.

In the first and third studio photographs, I added the soda tabs Alon used in her design to spell her brand name “Mussopo” and write out her quote. In the second studio portrait, I added pieces of the design’s skirt in the negative space.

For the location, I chose to shoot in a Laundromat. For the concept, “Opossum 1” was created in a laundry cycle “gone wrong,” where it forged together the contents inside to create Alon’s raw design. To me, denim, the main element in Alon’s design, has a rough, sandpapery feel. In order to have viewers feel the denim through the image, I printed the images and sandpapered them to emulate that sensory detail.”

- Tamara Benarroch