Italian Costume Designer Grimilde Malatesta

Artist Grimilde Malatesta Italian Costume Designer

I came to photography through a non-traditional path. I’m a costume designer for a living, so I always need images to promote my work. I’ve been trained in designing, drawing and painting, but not photography or sewing. So there’s a lot of experimenting and trial and error in my everyday life. It is different path from what is usually done, and this sometimes leads to results that are out of the box.

My costumes are a bit of a mix between historical fashion, cosplay and fantasy, so I needed images that could somehow complete the concept of the costume itself. I didn’t want to just describe them, I really wanted to show them “alive”, to showcase how that costume could make you feel when wearing it. And I’ve found there’s power in joining photography and design, aligning the two arts according to one cohesive vision.

As a self taught photographer, I started playing with the camera and I started studying technique whenever I felt my skills weren’t enough to take me to the result I wanted, instead of the other way round. As I did sewing. Some of the most successful images I’ve produced came from planning and studying, but some came from inspiration. Something good comes to the mind and instead of following the plan… you follow that crazy idea. While it doesn’t always work, when it does…it’s a burst of positive energy.

The images I produce are usually very colorful. My love for color comes from paintings, where colors are enhanced to trigger a specific emotion. I live in the country and walk a lot. So every walk, every dawn, every foggy day is a way to absorb the beauty of certain palettes. I’m deeply in love with sunsets and incandescent clouds for example, so in certain images the fabric of a specific costume can ignite with the saturation of a cumulonimbus at sunset.

Portraits are surely my favorite genre, as behind every face there’s a story, but even more the desire to become a certain character, to express a certain part of themselves in front of the lens.

Costume, model: @grimildemalatesta Photo: @siluna.portraits