Annie M. Vicar – Dolls & Skellery – Valentine’s Gifts for a Dark Romance. Courtesy of StyleCoven blog, we have some really twisted but sweet, dark but cute dolls for you this Valentine’s Day.
Baron Samedi and Maman Brigitte – couture doll creations – from Annie M. Vicar – Dolls and Skellery
“Aimons toujours ! Aimons encore ! Quand l’amour s’en va, l’espoir fuit. L’amour, c’est le cri de l’aurore, L’amour c’est l’hymne de la nuit.”
Ah, the wicked pleasures of a dark romance. What woman doesn’t dream of being taken by a demon lover at least once? Thanks to the steamy vampire/human romances on HBO’s “True Blood” and on the TWILIGHT movies, the attractions of a dangerous, dark romance have moved gracefully from the Goth scene to the mainstream. Enter artiste and master doll maker Annie M. Vicar.
The illustrious Ms. Vicar began her career as a doll maker after leaving school to find a more tangible way of using her creativity. When creating characters out of angles and vectors was not enough this “almost” graduate of the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, she simply left to find her destiny. And it’s a good thing that she did. A failed attempt a marionette led her to making the most darkly romantic one-of-a-kind dolls that I have ever seen. This Valentine’s Day we invite you to commission a doll for your Princess of Darkness. Annie is surprisingly shy, intense and very sweet. It was a pleasure catching up with her to talk about her past commissions, her available dolls and her hopes for a bright new future.
STYLE COVEN: What inspired you to begin making dolls in the style that you make them which is definitely “unbarbie” but extremely cool?
MS. VICAR: The first doll I ever made was actually a failed marionette design. I was making a series of circus freaks in an Eastern European style. I was just kind of figuring out a workable design through trial and error, so I had a few reject unstrung puppets sitting around my apartment. A friend of mine saw a puppet laying on my kitchen table and said “Hey, that’s a really cool doll”. So it kind of hit me then… hell, why not dolls? And so it began…
Custom Conjoined Zombie Twins – Annie M. Vicar
As far as them being “unbarbie” like, Well heck, you know… I never even thought of it that way. But you’re right, you don’t see many barbie zombies or Elizabethan cannibals that eat children, do you? Of course, as a child, I used to get in a fair amount of trouble for giving barbie more eyeliner with a ballpoint pen, cutting her hair into a mohawk & dyeing it blue with magic markers. So I suppose you could say my custom doll making started pretty early on. I guess typical things never held much appeal for me. I wanted to make everything to my own personal liking, and I did. Thanks to my dad, I was raised on old EC horror comic books and Alfred Hitchcock, so while other kids my age were listening to boy bands and painting each other’s fingernails, I was brooding in my room listening to my dad’s Black Sabbath records and giving my dolls “makeovers”. So to answer you question, I recon I’m just wired that way. What you see in my dolls are extensions of myself, pretty much. And no, I’m not a child-eating cannibal. But I do like to think of creative ways to punish the ones that scream bloody murder in grocery stores.
STYLE COVEN: Where do you get your materials?
MS. VICAR: I usually just pick things up at art and craft shops. I’ve acquired a lot of beautiful fabric from friends that have mothers who are/were seamstresses. I also use a lot of old, broken jewelry. You’d be amazed at the usefulness of broken antiques! I grew up in a poor family, so learned how to make use of EVERYTHING. I guess the hip term for that is now “upcycle”. I do that a lot. Geez… I find supplies just about everywhere come to think of it.
There is MUCH MORE to this post and it can be found on the StyleCoven Blog!! Thank you to Marie Bargas for the story! I LOVE these dolls. I can’t decide which one I want– or who I most identify with. Which is your favorite?
Stevie Wilson, LA-Story.com
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