Pieces designed and styled
by Batosara Tshimbila

In August, Dora and I met up for a small shoot since I had decided to document some of the pieces I made over the summer. 

Look number 1 contains of a reconstructed camo tee made into a scrunched off the shoulder top. Dora is also wearing a lace skirt with fringe details styled with gladiator heels with silver details.

In look number 2 is Dora dressed in a hot pink lace skirt with a mermaid hem detail. Styled with a grey tank top, pink bra and pleasers heels. 

And lastly, look number 3 consists of a dress I made in faux leather fabric. The dress is inspired by Betty Bop’s signature look and Dora is doll in this dress. I styled it with a mongolian fur collar and with the same gladiator heels. 

This shoot was a fun experiment tested with different poses consisted of handstands and yoga poses. The pictures were also taken with an iPhone 17 Pro Max, afterwards printed, ripped and made into a collage, hence the raw edges on some of the photos.  And at last scanned back into digitals.. 

“Kapselnarren” is a headpiece I created for Prosjektskolen’s Christmas exhibition (2024) where I picked up the inspiration from Congolese artists such as Junior Mungongu and Jean Precy Numbi Samba who transform trash into wearable costumes. I was assigned with other students from my class to showcase for the exhibition and I wanted to bring something outside the norwegian art world and included Congo in my craft. 

Artists like Mungongu and Samba showcase Kinshasa’s massive pollution problem it’s facing today, and wanting to explore upcycling and still pay homage to the countries in Africa burdened with piles of waste due to global overconsumption. This piece is playful yet serves as a reminder of the potential of the discharged materials – challenging the way we see trash and its roles in art and fashion.

And with that, I felt the need to bring that to light. I had collected bottle caps from my old job at a bar and drilled each and one bottle cap with a drilling machine, thereafter added rings on each hole for attachment. For more details, I cut out some stars from an old shirt I had, sewed and attached it to the headpiece. This process tokk me approximately 4 weeks and finally got to present my work for the exhibition. 

It is something about working so close with something for weeks and really getting physical with the craft to the point where you feel like a vessel for an idea to be executed. I so wanted to finish this project as if it was a calling or maybe it is a placebo, either or it worked and I made this beautiful piece.