From fashion to painting, Estel Day brings it all under one roof.
By Melonie Magruder / Special to The Malibu Times
To a generation shaped by all things Internet, “art” is defined by one discipline’s ability to interface with other forms of expression: visual art equals music, equals fashion, equals viral promotion. One survives upon the shoulders of another.
Estel Day, a young Malibu-based fashion designer, embodies this ethos in her paintings exhibited at a new group show titled “Faces: Dead & Alive” at the Compoundproject gallery upstairs in the Malibu Lumber Yard.
Dressed in black leggings, high boots, a grey tunic covered by a plaid shirt, a distressed, black leather jacket and silver reflecting aviator glasses, Day modestly talked about her work during a visit to the gallery.
Though her works represent a brand new direction for her career-wise, Day said, “I can’t really say that I prefer painting over fashion. My art and fashion, and music are all sort of the same thing. We just brought them under the same roof.”
“We” would be Day and her partner, Mark Tango, whom she met while they were students at Crossroads School, Tango studying music and Day studying theater. They started collaborating on fashion and music projects, recording their own vocals and creating designs together, working, Day said, from “an immediate creative connection.”
Coming from a family background that balanced artistic talent with entrepreneurial sensibility helped. Day’s father is a photographer and her grandmother, Jan Day, launched the Jafra Cosmetics line. Day grew up surrounded by artists of all stripes and she was constantly doodling herself, she said. She studied at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles and, at age 19, moved to New York City and launched her own label, called Loba.
She returned to reunite with Tango and to see how they could work together commercially. “We started off with no [money],” Day said.
After a year of conceptual designing, they launched “Mark and Estel” in 2005. Within a few months, Mary Kate Olsen was spotted in their designs and their recognition went viral.
Estel describes their brand as having a casual, but stylish, deconstructed look that is equally at home at the beach as walking down Fifth Avenue in New York City. Fashionistas like Lady Gaga, Ke$sha and Charlize Theron sport Mark and Estel. Their fashion shows are as much about the music they write (a distorted guitar, thumping house vibe) as the threads themselves.
The pair tends to blur the lines between what is art, what is music and what is performance. The models for their catalogues might be themselves or might be “interesting” friends. The boutiques that sell their clothing line play their music. They are working on designing fabrics that feature Day’s paintings.
In describing their work symbiosis in their showroom above PC Greens, Tango, dressed in an oversized T-shirt, ragged-hemmed shorts, black sneakers and a silver topped walking cane, said, “I once dreamed about a shirt and told Estel about it and she drew it up and it was perfect.”
And then, a few weeks ago, Day wandered into the studio of friend Robert Standish, a painter of hyperrealism who, amongst his portraiture, combines almost photographically accurate representations of street people with corporate logos as social commentary.
“I sort of mentioned that it would be fun to paint again and my friends were like, ‘You paint?’” Day said. “Robert urged me to start painting again and so I did.”
Sitting down with some canvases and a set of oils (perhaps the most difficult of mediums to master in painting), Day produced three paintings in as many weeks, portraits of intense color and mystery that she said have the same kind of deconstruction that she uses in her fashion design.
Glancing at her work hanging in the gallery beside such art-world luminaries as Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Mapplethorpe, Chuck Close and Andy Warhol, Day seemed shyly proud.
“They’re probably still wet,” she said of her oil paintings. “I am heavily influenced by the people I grew up around, like Robert [Standish]. And I love Chuck Close and Helmut Newton, so this is perfect for me.”
Debbie Frank, gallery owner and curator of the exhibition, said she was “thrilled” to include Day in the show.
“I think Estel is enormously talented,” Frank, who was wearing one of their T-shirt dresses, said. “At Compoundproject here we want to feature both known and emerging artists and for someone who hasn’t painted in a long time, or for a long time, for that matter, Estel has a lot to say.”
Neither Day nor Tango sees her new painting focus as taking anything away from their fashion empire.
“I love my work,” Day said. “Painting might divide up my time, but it’s divided anyway. It should fit right in with what we are trying to create.”
“Faces: Dead & Alive” will be on display at Compoundproject in the Malibu Lumber Yard upstairs gallery through Feb. 14.