Ulorin Vex: 25 Years of Gothic Beauty Original Contributor Interview

Ulorin Vex is a remarkable collaborative artist, very aware of what she is creating and exploring with her work. Conscious of not letting her persona overwhelm the clothing she modeled, she has worked with numerous fashion designers, photographers, and illustrators, across many genres. She is one of the only models to appear on the cover of Gothic Beauty Magazine more than once. She was photographed in Bibian Blue by Monica Chamorro on the cover of Gothic Beauty Magazine 30 wearing Mother of London, styled by Mildred Von, and photographed by Russell Coleman. Russell Coleman also photographed her with her twin sister Amalthea for Ulorin Vex’s first Gothic Beauty Magazine appearance, wearing Drac-In-A-Box, in issue 18. We have also published her wearing Freyagushi, Samantha Cole, and Girl Armour, with photographs by Root of Silence, Ardent Images, Allan Amato, Rebecca Litchfield, and Lenoir. Her credits are extensive and diverse; as a few examples, she modeled for a TIGI Bedhead campaign, posed for a Ministry album cover, toured as a stage performer with Emilie Autumn, and was the model Olivia De Berardinis chose for a very personal painting, for Sideshow Collectibles, about her own mother’s journey to death. Olivia De Berardinis gave Ulorin Vex the advice to, for her own illustrative work, to draw or paint every day.

There is a restless, searching quality to all of Ulorin Vex’s projects. She was raised on a council estate in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, England, a working class area with an industrial heritage in shipbuilding and coal mining. The first in her family to get an advanced education, she earned a Bachelor of Science in biology from the academically rigorous Durham University. She first thought of modeling partly because people on campus kept approaching her and asking if she was a model because of her elegant beauty. She picked the Ulorin Vex name mostly because it was sort of expected that models would have a model name. She says there was no particular reason for the name, but she has it more to represent her model identity than to hide. As an illustrator, she uses the name Malady Charlotina, from the Michael Moorcock science fiction series Dancers at the End of Time, or just her name name Christiane Shillito. Some of her paintings of fierce assertive women are explorations of dual natures, as well as themes of identity, processing trauma, transformation and neurodivergence.

BTS: How did this particular shoot with Monica Chamorro for Gothic Beauty Magazine 30 in Bibian Blue come together and what was the shoot day like? Anything you’d like to share about the location, how the collaboration went, what it was like working with your collaborators, anything extra you had to do to make the shoot happen?

I believe it was Bibian who reached out to me to model some of her new designs, I think she was visiting London from Barcelona and was doing several shoots back to back over a few days. If I recall, I didn’t know the rest of the team until we met on the day of the shoot. I have to admit my memory for the details is a little fuzzy, this was back in 2009! I do remember how excited I was to be modeling for Bibian as I loved all her work. I think I was actually quite nervous I’d be disappointing. I had so much imposter syndrome. But in the case of this shoot I needn’t have worried; it was one of those dream shoots where everything just came together perfectly; the hair, makeup, the outfits. It was all so stunning it was easy to get into character and feel great about how it would look. Even then though I had no idea how popular the final images would be. I don’t know if anyone did! I think they ended up being some of the most widely published images I’ve ever been in.

As someone who was an alternative supermodel in a pre-Instagram era, what are your thoughts on the ways the culture and its art/style/fashion have evolved, changed, become more accessible?

In some ways it’s amazing how accessible everything has become, we’ve definitely evolved and become more diverse which is a great thing. There are so many different subcultures within the subculture now. I try not to be one of those goths who I used to think were so silly when I was younger, who would lament things becoming more mainstream. I have noticed a huge increase in mass-produced fashion and a homogenization of styles/looks that are really highly polished and “curated”, which isn’t my cup of tea. I hope there’ll be a shift back to more DIY style, more individual creative expression and less emphasis on filtered perfection. I have to say I think this is a problem with social media in general, not exclusive to goth culture.

Obviously your work from this time period is iconic, but, from your perspective, where were you at in your career at the time?

This was still pretty early in my modeling journey, though at the time I felt so experienced compared to my first ever shoot in early 2004! But 2008 was around the time my career really started to take off, probably after my first trip to the USA/Los Angeles in 2007. I decided to make it my full time job in 2009. The shoot with Bibian was one of several pretty high profile jobs I had around this time, I felt very lucky.

What are some of your credits (publications, fashion shows, etc.)?

I feel so weird listing credits now. I kinda stopped keeping track of stuff after a certain point, especially when things stopped being in printed publications so much. I don’t mean that at all to sound like bragging or anything, it’s just been over 20 years haha. I have been on a lot of print magazine covers and ad campaigns, even a couple more mainstream ones but in all honesty my Gothic Beauty covers are still some of my highlights! As well as the Bibian cover you were my first ever cover with issue 21. I do have a section on my website with a lot of my major print features and credits if anyone is interested in that.

I never really wanted to focus on any one niche and I’ve been fortunate enough to make a successful career out of being somewhat of a chameleon!

In 2017 I decided to step back a bit from shooting full time in order to put more of my creative energy into my own artwork. Yes, I’m also an artist/illustrator under my real name, Christiane Shillito. However, I am still shooting … I don’t think I could ever stop completely.

www.ulorinvex.com
Instagram: @vextraterrestrial

The Gothic Beauty reunion retrospective Project is on Kickstarter until December 11.