This Stockholm-based Canadian artist and model photographed her “medieval knight-inspired party look” and other vintage treasures for Vogue in the cold and enchanting Swedish forest.
Ahead of the Vogue Vintage Market, collector Monacco Dunn not only talked to me about her relationship with clothing; she also photographed some of her treasures—including a “medieval knight-inspired party look”—in the chilly Swedish woods.
Now based in Stockholm, the 20-something artist and model grew up in a small town in Ontario. As a child, one of her favorite books as a child was Stella, Fairy of the Forest, and it’s easy to imagine Dunn as a fairytale Queen of the Woods—or a brunette version of the princess who walks, head held high, with trolls through the forest in John Bauer’s 1913 illustration for The Changelings. For Dunn, getting dressed is a way to express herself imaginatively and weave a narrative. “I look for something that embodies my soul on the inside, so I can wear that on the outside,” she says. Her approach to buying and wearing vintage is instinctive. Although Dunn would be happy to have something by Jeanne Lanvin or a real medieval garment, Dunn is drawn to individual pieces, especially their make, feel, and backstory. “My favorite pieces are things that were gifted to me, or that I found in a free pile, or were handed down by family members,” she said. While others are on the lookout for big-name labels, this artist is hoping to find something with “a ghost still in the threads.” Where are you from? I’m originally from Vancouver, British Columbia, but when I was 10, I moved to a tiny, tiny town in Northern Ontario called Deep River, where we lived in a cabin in the woods. The population of the town is 4,200 people, so it was really, really isolated. It’s a nuclear reactor town. It’s very beautiful; it looks exactly like Sweden. We always played pretend. We had a TV, but we didn’t have cable, so we didn’t watch it. I wasn’t allowed to play on the computer or anything like that, so it was a lot of going outside and playing with sticks and making up games. I had a lot of books on medieval times and a lot of fairy stories. My grandfather would travel the world, and he’d always bring back artifacts. I spent a lot of time with him, and he had a parrot—he still has the parrot—called Socrates. He’s from Greece. We’d walk in the woods, and my grandpa would tell me it’s like a fairy forest and we’d build fairy houses. Is there a story behind your name? My mother just wanted to give me an interesting name. I like it because it’s very decadent and luxurious—I must love things like yachts, champagne, and oysters, and live my life in glamour and mystery, ha ha! Have you always been interested in fashion? I’ve been obsessed with dressing up for as long as I can remember. I used to either dress up as a princess or a dog—or I’d dress up like a boy to fix cars with my dad. I always loved dressing up; my stepmom makes clothes, so she made me a lot of purple costumes that I asked for. And then I have a lot of hand-me-downs; my parents never bought new stuff. How did you dress in high school? I was really goth, like really punk goth, when I was a kid. I tried to be normal when I got into high school—like leggings and bench jackets and Lululemon headbands—but it didn’t pan out. Then I started wearing dress-up clothes to school, and I’d wear tutu skirts as a strapless dress. I remember that day I got sent home for breaking the dress code. What do you look for in vintage? I look for 1920s and 1930s pieces, that’s my favorite. I like Art Nouveau and medieval. I like Jeanne Lanvin; I wish I could have one of those. I look for good quality materials; I like silk and satin a lot, even though they start to deteriorate once I start wearing them. I like intricate details, I like to see that the piece is made well, and something that seems like it has a story or perhaps a ghost still in the threads. And I look for something that embodies my soul on the inside, so I can wear that on the outside, so a bit melancholic, dramatic, mysterious pieces or very ethereal, flowy stuff as well. And they're poetic. I like even intricate stuff a bit simple, preferably monochromatic. I’m not really a color person; I like everything to kind of blend together. Other than that, wearing pants really confuses me because then you have to match them with a top. Dressing casually in really high-end clothing feels so much more difficult to me than wearing a gown or a vintage one-piece. Where do you like to shop for vintage? A lot of the small-town thrift stores are really good because nobody there goes picking for vintage, so there’s a lot of untouched stuff. After high school, I moved to Toronto and I started working at a vintage store. I would just spend my whole paycheck there, always on the craziest gowns. I remember this one floor-length velvet gown from the ’70s with an open back. When I was in Phoenix, Arizona, I came across a shop, and I went in and started talking to the woman who owned it and she was like, ‘I can see you’re like a gray silvery purple girl.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah.’ is a strapless kind of mermaid and it has a built-in corset. I think it must be from the ’90s. How did you start modeling? My stepdad’s mom has psychic abilities—she’s not a psychic . . . she told my mom when I was younger, before I grew tall, ‘I saw Monacco walking the runways in Paris.’ And then I got tall . . . and my mom took me to an agency, and they signed me. I’ve had a lot of agents, and I’ve moved around a lot. I’ve left a lot of them because I felt like they were always trying to put me into a category, and not express myself but instead to fit in, keep quiet, and wear skinny jeans. I always thought if I just do my own thing, what’s the worst that happens in the end, because I tried? When I was in Paris for the first time, I started going to castings in like ball gowns and stuff. Once I went into Dries Van Noten for casting at like 10:00 am in that black velvet gown I was talking about earlier. There were so many girls in there, but Dries himself came up to me from across the room, and he took my arm, and he was like, ‘Now that’s what I call an open back for breakfast. Come through.’ And then he put me in this black shimmering gown that kind of looked like mine. What do you wear on a daily basis? I wear vintage, never jeans and a Tee, never, not even when I’m painting. Okay, I have been wearing more tank tops, but ideally, I wear pretty gowns and stuff every day, but it’s so cold in Sweden that I can’t really do that, so I’ve been wearing pants and snow boots. I never plan my outfits ahead of time, that’s why when I travel, I have to bring two suitcases with everything because I don’t know how I’m going to feel when I wake up, or what emotions I feel like channeling through my outfits those days. I usually just see the stuff lying around, and I put it on and I’m like, ‘Okay, this works with that or that.’ It’s more intuitive. I’ve never really kept up with fashion trends or styling notes or anything like that. What’s next for you? I feel a bit disconnected from painting, as I think it came from a place when I was much more depressed and such, and just different, and I’ve changed a bit and I’m a bit confused with it now. I was classically trained in singing my whole life. Music is what I’ve always loved; it’s always the thing that instantly moves me and has that power and effect on people. That’s what I’ve always thought I would do since I was a child, and I think I’m not bad at it. It’s not going to be like pop music, it’s going to be a bit weird, and witchy, folky.
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