Blue Nude x Chisara Vidale
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During 2024 I was selected by independent slow fashion brand Blue Nude, to collaboratively create a series of five up-cycled handbags as a part of their upcoming AW24 collection. The following text was taken from Blue Nude's journal post 'Creative Process ~ Raha's Upcycled Wool & Leather Handbags' :
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"One of the best solutions to combating fashion's waste problem is upcycling. By definition, it's the process of adding value to something which previously held little. Reading about the incredible solutions-based creativity of designers in countries with textile-waste issues, like Nigeria, creating businesses out of reclaimed and recovered textiles is inspiring. It made us wonder - was this a space that Blue Nude could contribute to?
Meanwhile, we began to field questions about whether and when we'd make handbags. While we secretly had our organic cotton Enso Curved Tote Bag in the works, we began to ponder what a progressive approach to making the hallmark of a brand - the leather handbag - would look like for Blue Nude. We began to think about the incredible bags we've seen at vintage and thrift marketplaces that have only a small element which makes them defective or out of style. What if we were to give vintage leather bags an artistic makeover, turning them into our signature pieces of wearable art?
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Working on the Raha collection, with its inspiration from Morocco and the wool artistry of Berber people, we began to dream of a handbag that would be embellished with wool, almost giving it a fur-like quality. Thus, we concluded we had to partner with a wool and textile artist for the project.
Through another artist's Instagram account, we anonymously held an open casting call for wool and textile artists to submit their portfolios. Amongst many talented applicants, Chisara Vidale's portfolio shined. Not only was she an accomplished textile artist, quilt maker, and painter, she was skilled in wool felting as well. Illustrious and imaginative, we were drawn to Chisara's psychedelic landscapes and her ability to make common objects of the natural world have an otherworldly quality.
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We quickly met and set off on our adventure to transform five bags and work with a new material we hadn't encountered in our artistic practices - leather. Dreaming up designs for the bag, we were drawn to the idea of the bag shapes hanging off the shoulder, tucked under the arm like 'comfort creatures'. We admired the metal studs used in the doors of Morocco and decided to experiment with metal eyelets that would be pierced with 'tails' of felted merino wool. On the front, we would cut away from the original leather to reveal patches of felted merino wool, manipulated to have multicoloured stripes and stitched with zig-zags to create texture. We chose specific colours, shapes, and textures that we felt spoke to the 'soul' of each bag.
​​​​​​​​​​​​​After the creative ideation, we had to solve the technical aspect - how would we do this? After removing the interior liner, we cut away sections of the bag's leather, and then installed our wool panels. The wool panels consisted of hand-felted wool that was glued, covered with a soft decorative overlayer of multicoloured natural merino wool strands, then stitched into place with a zigzag stitch. The wool was then glued to recycled cotton canvas with PVA medium, stitched around the edges for reinforcement, then attached with leather bonding glue and stitched again to the original leather to hold in place. For the bag's tails, layered multicolour merino wool was woven into a yarn core, with density added via a felting needle. These were attached to metal hinge hooks, then pierced through metal eyelets which we inserted into each bag's side. Finally, fresh bamboo silk lining was reinserted with new labels, including a hand-drawn signature from Chisara, alongside edition numbering identifying each unique bag.
​​​​​​​​​​​​Our efforts transformed five forgotten vintage bags into one-of-a-kind pieces of wearable, functional art. They are Asmun, which means 'friend' in Berber, a brown and green wool triangle bag. Tamot, meaning 'wool' in Berber, is patent leather with deep blue/black wool embellishment. Zagora, a sandy pink and black flap bag, gets its name from the Moroccan town near the Saharan desert whose stone makes it turn peachy pink at sunset. Atlas is the smallest, a pouchette in black and white named for the Atlas Mountains. Finally, Afa, meaning 'fire' in Berber, is the most textured bag with a deep blue and black double tail. "
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Raha's Upcycled Wool & Leather Handbags are now available to be purchased via Blue Nude's website and Wolf and Badger's online store.
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Blue Nude's Interview with Chisara Vidale
"Chisara Vidale is a visual and textile artist based in London, UK. Across painted and textile mediums, she imbues her work with imagination, colour, and spirituality. Chisara's art explores spiritual representations and embodiments in the natural world. In psychedelic hues, she sees a prism of colour in simple life forms, such as leaves and fungi. There is a mythological aspect to her work, with ties to England's ancient world of druidism and paganism. Her spiritual animal, the horse, is represented frequently in her paintings as a majestic and conscious creature.
Humankind's tendency for hierarchy is dismantled in her art, examining balance and coexistence in the natural world. It's a call to look towards nature to restructure and align our existence beyond our current destructive and overly consumptive ways of living.
For the Raha collection, we collaborated with Chisara on up-cyling vintage leather handbags. Manipulating wool, we transformed these forgotten bags into tactile, one-of-a-kind pieces of wearable art.
BN: I quite like your exploration of England's ancient culture of druidism and paganism. I find this aspect of the UK's history one of the most
interesting, but seems to be one that's largely forgotten. Why does this
period fascinate you, and what aspects of this culture would you like to
see return to the UK?
CV: I think that my interest in these ancient practices began with my love of walking and watching seasonal change. The seasons are such a large part of our lives in the UK, we move quite quickly through long hot days to short cold ones in a continuous rhythm. The moon cycle influences our bodies and the oceans, and the height of the sun in the sky changes the way we experience sunrises and sunsets.
Part of my love of these ancient cultures is their reverence for these cycles in nature and their honouring of the deep connection we have with them. Standing stones like those at Avebury have such a beautiful presence, which I think is enhanced by the countless generations who have greeted and celebrated solstices there.
Marking these times of year and the ebb and flow of seasonal change in the landscape gives permission for us to know that our minds and bodies also follow these rhythms. Perhaps we would be able to give ourselves permission to slow down more easily, if we were honouring these cycles as a society. It would be amazing to see celebrations of the coming of spring, or the autumn equinox become more mainstream, because I feel that in acknowledging natural cycles we
see our own better.
BN: You've been creating a lot of work recently, depicting horses. Why is the horse a spiritual representation of your soul?
CV: The horses have always been a part of my psyche, and I rode horses growing up. For a while they hadn’t been a part of my work as I explored the plant and fungal worlds in depth. But a couple of years ago I was looking at the work of Franz Marc and his depictions of animals in the landscape. I was really inspired by the way that he integrated his horses into the land, they grew in and out of their surroundings. Around the same time I was beginning to keep more in-depth dream diaries and practice shamanic journeying using drumming. It was magical to feel a sense of the mythic world coming to life in everything that I was experiencing through sound and dreaming. I began to meet horses in these realms who were a part of me, or who
felt like old friends who gave advice and guidance.
Over time as I began to paint and draw horses more, a vision of this ‘otherworld’ developed into my current work. In this space there is an overlapping of time and species, the horses are like aspects of my psyche experiencing the landscape in a more fluid way. They are sometimes larger than mountains and other times smaller than mushrooms, but always deeply rooted in the earth.
BN: What artists are currently inspiring you?
CV: I really love the work of the artists from the Transcendental painting group. They were a collective of artists in the 1930s and 40s who explored abstract painting. Agnes Pelton and Florence Miller Pierce were making such groundbreaking painting, and imbuing a feeling of spirit into their work. I am also really inspired by contemporary artists too like Nadia Waheed, who’s work is really powerful and striking. There are also British artists, like Georg Wilson, whose paintings I love,
that delve into the folklore of this land and the underworld lives of goblins.
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BN: What is your favourite colour, and why?
CV: Somewhere between a green and a blue, but I think green wins! Green is the plants, the trees, hills and oceans, my eyes can rest in all the shades of green.
BN: What is something unexpected that inspires you?
CV: I love boats and particularly canal boats and narrowboats, although I don’t like the idea of being on a boat in the open ocean! Because of this, I walk London’s canals a lot and have begun walking canals out of London too. There is something about a nomadic way of life, often with gardens on the roof and pets in tow that is really beautiful. I think In my mind the boats are a bit like great herds, migrating up and down these watercourses. I think that the visual layering of these riverside
environments is the reason why there are so many rivers and waterways in my work.
BN: What did you absorb from the source inspiration of Morocco for our
collaboration? What visual or spiritual elements were the most inspiring?
CV: I immediately felt a sense of colour, texture and warmth. I was drawn to the overlapping and varying textures in Moroccan interiors and the combination of very subtle and then very bold colour ways. I think I was most inspired by the mixed natural materials, such as ceramic, earth, adobe, wool and wood. The idea of mixing materials unconventionally appealed to me. There is also a spiritual
relationship to the land, using natural fibres and materials in this way is born of an understanding of your landscape. Caring for animals, spinning and dyeing wool, then weaving it into rugs, there is so much beauty and connection in both the artistry and the process.
BN: How did you find working with fashion, and leather?
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CV: It was really exciting to work with fashion and leather, I hadn’t worked on something with the goal of someone enjoying and using your creation before. It was really interesting to learn about how this informs your approach. I also really enjoyed the experimentation stage and developing a method to work with the bags from the initial sketches.
BN: If there were any medium of art you'd like to try, what would it be, and why?
CV: I would really like to work in ceramics, I did clay classes as a child, which I enjoyed, and would love to return to it one day. There is something so alchemical about being able to dig clay, create slips and glazes, burnish and fire the work outdoors. I think that the process of discovery would be really exciting. I want my work to become more and more immersive in nature as I progress, to be making across different mediums to create experiences for the viewer. I think that ceramics would bring a really interesting element to this.
BN: You used the term 'magical realism' one day while describing your art. What is this, and why do you align with this term?
CV: Magical realism is an approach to fiction and art that gives a realistic view of the world that is imbued with magic, blurring the lines between the supernatural and the mundane. I think my work aligns with this term in the sense that from a distance some of my pieces can look like an animal in a landscape, or a patchwork quilt, which are quite traditional approaches to art-making. But when you get closer to them, there are aspects that hint at an otherworldly space. There are large bacterial bodies floating through trees, the patterns of water reaching over a hillside, or patches of fabric that take on unexplained forms. I think there is a hidden magic in my work that is born of the land and the spirit that lives in everything.
BN: What's next on your creative adventure?
CV: I think it is something to do with words. I have been including small sections of text in paintings and on the back of quilts I’ve made. I want to develop this further, the connections between words, imagery and objects. I’m not sure what will become of these ideas yet, maybe a book, zine, wall-hangings, but I’m excited about it!"