The Cabaret Switch

Photos Sin Bozkurt

When two of Et Alors?’s favorite artists decided to do a personae switch, a smile appeared on our faces. Queen of fetish cabaret and diva extraordinaire Marnie Scarlet, transformes into Mr. Pustra, Vaudeville’s Darkest Muse. We leave it up to them to tell you all about it. 

Name Marnie Scarlet
What Getting under Le Pustra’s skin

I have known Le Pustra for a number of years now and I have always valued and admired him as a person and a multi-faceted visual artist. We appreciate each other’s style which both compliments and contrasts. I love the inner strength of his various characters, the dark and melancholy aspects, as well as the beautifully executed make-ups and outfits. When Le Pustra approached me with the idea of a Cabaret Switch, I was honored and excited. We started laying out the plans and asked good friend and experienced Cabaret photographer, Sin Bozkurt to immortalize the project. We have both worked with Sin before and he understands both our characters very well. We decided to swap two of our Looks/Characters. We both have a pop-culture icon based act in our oeuvre: for Le Pustra that’s a phenomenal Klaus Nomi act, for me that’s a tribute to Marilyn Monroe in Warhol style. It was amazing to be transformed into le Pustra and to be transform by him in return. Quite spooky and magical. During the shoot we truly transformed into each other’s creations which was an amazing creative process. When some of the photos went up on our respective Facebook sites, it actually did cause confusion as to who was who, and what was going on. The reaction we wanted!

Name Le Pustra
What Wearing Marnie Scarlet’s (shiny) skin

I approached Marnie regarding this concept in late 2013 as there are so many similarities between our public personas. I thought it would be interesting to portray each other and see what happens. I really adore her visual style and skill as a latex designer and visual artist. Marnie was very happy to be involved and we decided on switching our ‘icon’ characters e.g. Klaus Nomi and Marilyn Monroe – both latex – and our signature ‘Marnie’ and ‘Le Pustra’ looks, e.g. the Pierrot clown and Rubber Dolly. Photographer Sin Bozkurt agreed immediately to be part of the project and we even used our favorite studio in London. I think it was quite tricky to do each other’s make-up and it was interesting to find out how well we knew our own faces. Yet doing our own face on someone else, was definitely a challenge. Marnie even made a latex outfit in my size to wear as her Rubber Dolly. How wonderful was that? Since she has let me keep it, there might be a chance you may spot a slightly larger Marnie running in the streets in the near future. I must confess how much I admire Miss Marnie for wearing her, sometimes restrictive, latex costumes. The amount of effort and thought she has put into those designs. I don’t know any other artist whose work is so detailed and so clever.Bravissima, Marnie! Collaboration between artists can be such a rewarding experience and Marnie is one of my most favorite people on the scene as she is just brimming with talent, color and energy. And she has a heart of latex gold. I would work with her any day and look forward to see how she evolves over the coming years. I expect nothing but greatness from the First Lady of Latex. It was a fun experience being someone else for a day.

www.marniescarlet.com
www.lepustra.com