I wish my heart was hard like metal, with a warm and bright golden shine. A safe and unbreakable golden vessel, keeping my vulnerability locked away.
I wish your presence was tattooed onto my soul, not fading when the air exits my lungs. My feeble memory is my vehement enemy, betraying me of what I crave the most.
I wish my skin was the surface of a shooting star, catching your eyes with a glittering delight. What I am is an enchantress with no magic, under your spell but not in your arms.
I wish I could bend time to create a futuristic world, where love is the currency and loyalty is the key. I would take you to a place where all is possible. Just like in my head. Still.
Please visit the exhibition Female Form at Art Space “parat” in Zurich, 17. – 23.10.22 with pictures from Nora Dal Cero, Sophie Stieger & Franziska Willimann.
Do you think people dance to express their happiness and joy, go to parties and clubs and jump on a table when there is a reason to celebrate and be crazy? Those pictures come to our mind quite fast if we think about the expression of happiness, but I reveal something: You have been deceived if you fell for them!
Yes, they are happy people at clubs, no question. But many people dance to get rid of pain, free themselves of the dullness of their lives, overcome heartbreak and self-doubt, and forget rejection, hurt and loss. They go out when their four walls seem threatening and they long for the roaring bass. They go to a club when they can’t stand silence and loneliness gets too heavy. Many tears are shed under the blinking disco lights, and many bottles of booze are drunk only to shut the mind off.
Did you ever notice that many dance songs have happy, upbeat tunes but quite sad lyrics? This is no coincidence. The list would be long, from Dancing on my own by Robin to Nothing Breaks Like a Heart by Miley Cyrus and many more. Don’t fall for what you see! People sometimes dress the brightest, dance the wildest and sing the loudest when they are the saddest.
If you want to know what’s in a person’s heart, talk, don’t judge from what you see!
With red roses, he declared his love to me, the sunflowers marked the most beautiful summer, while our hands couldn’t let each other go.
We kept each other warm in winter, like two snowdrops growing on the same soil. We didn’t need laurel. We just kissed.
The scent of lavender filled the sweetest dreams, we talked about the flower fields of our future. What we had was as unique as the rarest orchid.
Life was beautiful and felt like a bunch of hydrangeas, I found more peace than any lily could negotiate. Paradise garden was everything I ever wanted.
Boldly I dug my roots deep into foreign grounds, I had visions of planting dahlias and peonies. But we never saw the tulips of the following spring.
One day the vase was empty. He was gone. The Forget-me-nots are watered by my tears now. Where he went, I do now know.
Please come back. I don’t need flowers, but I do need you.
Oh, you sweet nostalgia: That longing for the glorious past that overcomes me, especially while looking at old black and white pictures. I am always amazed by how beautiful people look in suits and old-fashioned dresses.
I am very grateful to live in the now, grateful to live in a world where human rights, rights for women, transgender people and minorities have come much further than in the old days. Science can do amazing things nowadays, and technology is almost magic. There are cures for diseases that used to be deadly, and we have more possibilities to discover the world than Columbus could have imagined in his wildest dreams.
Don’t get me wrong: I am a part-time science fiction girl as I am a part-time retro girl, so I don’t say everything should dress like in the 1890s or 1950s. But when I look at how people dress, I sometimes long for the old times. But I often don’t feel that people care about what they wear from a visual perspective, which is not the same as a practical or fashionable perspective.
Let alone the manners: How did we come from “Madam, would you be so kind and….?” to “Yo bitch, move!”. Language can be as beautiful as clothes if we use it that way and treat every world like a precious pearl on a row that forms a stunning necklace. Find rare words at the bottom of your vocabulary and bring them back, be precise, and play with the way how you talk and the way how you pronounce them. Why is this not fashionable?
So sweet nostalgia: You are welcome here; please take a seat and stay with me!
Please love my tender, touch me like a soft feather and hold me like I’m made of delicate thin porcelain. There is a lot of harshness in the world, so let’s build our private comfort zone.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m strong enough to survive all kinds of things. This ability doesn’t contradict my longing to show my fragility without getting hurt. I want to take off my armour and be.
I show you my delicate skin, gashing wounds, damages, bruises, and not yet touched parts of my body and soul. All innocence and naiveness left inside of me, I present to you. The part of me that is still a little girl with silly dreams and everything I keep hidden beneath the deep ocean of my eyes.
Show me your daemons, and I’ll show you mine, but then let’s lock them away in the basement and dance into the sunset. You and me, we’ve seen dark, and I am even more grateful for the sparkles we share. Wounded people know how to treat wounds. Our souls hug each other softly as butter, light as powder. Our mouths meet, and it’s a warm encounter full of trust, hunger and desire. You take my hand and spin me around, your smile following my eyes.
I blow you a pink kiss, grateful for your presence from the bottom of my heart, lucky to dance in your universe and hold the key to your love. It’s the most precious thing my fingers ever touched, so I love you tender, I promise.
Once upon a time, a girl went out into the world to spread colour. She started with a small spot and watched it grow. While she was radiating pink and yellow and turquoise, she was hiding dark spots inside.
Everybody thought she was brave and happy, but inside her heart, she had harboured dark spots since she was a kid. She had the ability to see the bright in the dark, which was her talent and her curse as well. It made her fly; it made her fall. She was often hurt for running after a bright spot and ending up being eaten up by darkness. But no matter where and how she was, she made people happy even when she was sad. If she could just overcome the difficulties to cheer herself up…
All her efforts to make her inside as bright as her outside didn’t work. She struggled. But then something extraordinary happened: She found somebody who challenged her yet gave her the feeling of freedom she never knew. She stopped to care about a lot of things and just lived.
She laughed while her hair was messy and gave up caring about her own imperfections. Her focus switched from the outside to the inside.
All of this happened because she was shown to be enough, just like she was. She didn’t need to be art all the time. It was fine just to be the tiny little self when all the spotlights turned off, and vulnerability appeared. It was fine not to be perfect, not to be beautiful, not to be especially charming.
Thank you, whoever showed that girl what she couldn’t have found alone. A kind mirror to look at herself.
My outfit: All Clothes by Maya Seyferth, Earrings: House of Holland, Sunglasses: Tatty Devine Hat: Maison Julie
Regarding pictures, I strive for perfection and take care of every detail. It takes a lot of effort to create a perfect image, but still, it’s nothing compared to the energy required to become a better version of yourself. This is what I love to do: To create wonderful, inspiring and surprising pictures.
Recently I realised that I am further from perfection as a person than I thought. I felt that I made a lot of progress in the last three years, being more independent and on my own more than ever, but still: I’m standing in front of a huge mountain to climb. Sometimes it’s very frustrating and overwhelming. I constantly try to work on myself, but right now, it seems there is so much about myself that I wish I could improve.
As a kid, I thought I’d be supposed to know all the answers at my current age. Now I feel like I know not even the basics for many questions after 30+ years on this earth. Too often, I say the wrong things. I stay quiet because I feel helpless or hide from decisions I should make. I don’t treat people the way they deserve and don’t understand their feelings all the time. I can be too selfish, illogical, not constructive, too needy, and too greedy for attention. Too clingy, too sentimental, too silly, I sometimes lack depth or humour. I feel heavy for myself and others. I’m too much or not enough of so many other things.
When I think about those things, I sometimes doubt myself to the naked bones and feel like I’m not doing well at being a woman, a lover, a friend, a creative or anything at all. I roll my eyes about myself and wonder how you all manage. If you face an equal amount of doubts and challenges and if you share my exhaustion about improvement and a feeling of getting nowhere.
I really became good at analysing why I act the way I do – mostly because my past is pulling my strings. It’s sometimes challenging not to become the puppet of your past. I often push it away very consciously. I also discover things I consider flaws that have never been an issue before. It’s a neverending process. Maybe this is what life is about, not getting famous, rich or reaching goals, but working on yourself. Dear people out there, please be patient with me, with each other, with your beloved ones, and with everybody around you. I guess we’re all equally lost sometimes.
Dress: Vivetta, Shoes: Dollskill, Bow: Vintage Male Model: Photörhead
And finally, I have a girl group! Thank you, Happy Onion, for casting this diverse and extraordinary bunch for some severe colour blocking during a fabulous shoot.
No matter how different we are, we still have a lot in common: We are all girls, we go boldly our way, and our love for fashion unites us. We live colours, play with our looks, and are no wallflowers. We cheer for each other, see beauty in how different we are, learn from each other and hold each other up. This empowering attitude is what it should mean to be a girl.
No bitch fights, jealousy and criticism among women. The world is already complex enough for us girls. Still, we are not always taken seriously or get belittled. In the business world, we must work hard to be heard, often harder than others. If we dress up, we get called vain, or people assume our heads are empty. If we are not married, we are called whores. Why is it like that? Why does it seem more straightforward to applaud men for many people? I can’t say, but I can say that we girls have a lot of power in our hands if we stick together.
I love you, girl group. I love fashion and last but not least: Can please somebody buy me those blue trousers from Happy Onion?
Real is real, and fake is fake, you think? I tell you it isn’t: Fake gold is still shining golden and fake nails can also scratch. Fake moans make (if convincing) a similar sound to real ones. Even a fake smile is still a smile that might charm some fools.
But other things are just nothing when they are fake: Love, for example. Because if love is fake, it’s not even love at all. It’s just nothing but a sad, evil show that breaks precious hearts.
So my sisters follow my advice: It’s ok if your gold is everything but a precious metal. If you like, may your lashes be out of the question to be designed by nature. But there is one thing: Keep your feelings real and beware of falling for shiny fake emotions served by people with hearts made out of not even fake gold but ugly stone. Those people behave like bulls in the china shop and destroy all the delicate things by pretending realness where there is only a fake.
We deserve real, pure and honest! We don’t deserve our beautiful hearts to be broken, and we earn a love that is more than emptiness wrapped in shiny paper. Being real might not get you the most in life all the time, but it will grant you that you can always look into the mirror, hold the stare of your own eyes and admire how pretty the golden coat looks on you.
My outfit: All Clothes by Maya Seyferth, Sunglasses: Craig & Karl x Quay
Just like Charlie, I found the Golden Ticket. I am the lucky one, I made it. Here is this moment everybody is longing for, where everything is dipped into gold.
Every morning I open my eyes and ask myself “Could it be my lucky day, could it be today?” and the Golden Ticket is a YES. Not just a yes, but a YES in capital letters. It’s the kind of moment when all your fears and troubles suddenly don’t feel frightening anymore and all you are is a body full of bliss.
Can it last forever? Oh, darling, I’m afraid it can’t. But it will come back and you will have more of those moments. Don’t be so greedy! Remember how you set your goals? Remember that you asked for one time wearing a dress like a queen, remember when you asked just for one kiss by the man of your dreams? Can you still recall how you wanted to be covered in glitter just once?
So there we go: Dreams come true, and not just once, but several times. The one-time-only turns into please-don’t-let-it-be-the-last-time and the carousel moves on. Every morning arises the question “Could it be my lucky day? Could it be the Golden Ticket?”.
Just relax, if it isn’t. maybe it’s tomorrow or next week. Just keep on going, keep on having that sweet anticipation tingling in your veins and keep on wishing. There is not just one Golden Ticket!
