Fairytales: Petra Collins and Alexa Demie

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This collaboration sees Alexa Demie embody empowered femme mythical beings in a world like ours today. It was super cathartic because I hadn’t created artwork since my last book, and there was a real sense of discovery where we were just playing. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights.

The handwritten text is harder to follow; I’d recommend treating them as poems and re-reading the book to grasp the intensity of the stories told. Demie represents womxn through different lenses, all with outcomes of alienation and objectification. Petra posted a photograph of a fairy, and I wrote to her and said, ‘I want to be a fairy,’ and she was like, ‘Well, let’s make you a fairy,’” Demie says of the origins of their friendship, laughing.The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast. Featuring illustrations by Evita Flores, deceivingly innocent, coloured-pencil drawings show butterflies in trees, witches and flying mice, a cottage in flames, and rope-wrapped mermaids accepting their fate. The photographs, are stunning, magical, and transmit an aura that, for me, would make this book 5 stars. One photo shoot and a pair of prosthetic elf ears later, the pair decided to push the project further, eventually crafting nine individual fables with a touch of something both sinister and seductive. Their recent photo book "Fairy Tales" features Demie as nine different personas, including a faerie, siren, banshee and water sprite, as well as Hungarian legends like Tűz Anya (meaning'fire mother') that Collins grew up with.

The stories by themselves are quite one-dimensional, but completely come to life with the photography.It helped too that there was an instant artistic synergy between the pair from their very first day on set together. It explores the femininity and sexuality of mythological beings, but in the context of very human spaces, such as teenage bedrooms, medical facilities, parking lots and exotic dancing clubs. As children, Petra and Alexa were both enamoured with fairy tales, which provided an escape from their own painful realities.