Faces help to tell us a lot about people – who they are, what they’re thinking and what they might be planning next. Masks disrupt all of that. They provide functional anonymity, allowing  your inner extrovert to come out to play. In a mask you can run around in plain view going as wild as you like and no one will know it’s you... in short, you can get away with murder! The last issue of Dazed asked leading fashion designers to create masks out of studio scraps, so we decided to take a look at some of the men and women who are getting all masked-up – those performers, artists and designers whose careers revolve around the weirdest part of the wardrobe.

Nicholas Charbon – Mask Maker
London-based Nicolas Charbon is a former nuclear engineer turned cyber-punk google craftsmen who works from his design workshop, Atomefabrick.

DD: What is it that you do?
Nicholas Charbon: I hand craft goggles and masks.

DD: What were the first goggles for?
NC: Before I knew the name of things like steam punk or cyber punk, I was going to parties and I wanted to try something out that was a little different. I used to ride motor bikes, and I wanted something that I could combine with leathers. Something made to look industrial, mechanical.

DD: What do your masks bring out in wearers?
NC: A kind of dungeony, mechanical guy who's from another planet, or at least from another time or another reality.

DD: What's inspires your style?
NC: I like painters who celebrate the industrialised era. The artists who were involved in futurism, such as Fernard Leger.
Music-wise I like industrial bands like Laibach, Carbaret, Non, Esplendor and SPK.

See Nicolas's creations at his website


Garry Vanderhorne AKA Shiro Yoshida, Luchador
Garry Vanderhourne is founder of Lucha Britannia and owner of Bethnal Green based, Resistance Gallery.

DD: What do you do?
Garry Vanderhorne: I am a Luchador competing with Lucha Britannia.

DD: Masks play a major part of a Luchadors costume, what are the benefits of the wrestler's mask?
Garry Vanderhorne: It's the anonymity. You create an alter ego so people in real life don't know who you are. You can change nationality and transcend any of the shortcomings that you might have. The audience can only see what you give to them. If you want them to cheer you can make them cheer! With the mask on you can put out an attitude, it gives you a raw canvas to work with to create a new character. You're leaving the packaging of reality behind.

DD: So how to you come to choose your characters visage?
Garry Vanderhorne: Some masks are passed down from fathers to sons. Or you have to do your time – do your training and your tutor will bestow a mask upon you. Once you have that mask you can never change character. Once you have been unmasked you could never go back. That's it. Game over. Luchador Rey Mysterio (famous Mexican luchador) got a lot of bad press because he unmasked once and then went back. When you are unmasked your character is dead.

DD: So how famous can these masks get?
Garry Vanderhorne: Take El Hijo Del Santo. He's the most famous Mexican Wrestler. He's on the stamps and he's got his own drinks, clothing line and cartoons. He works with the government to help get education to children. When he walks down the street hundreds of children run out to greet him. Nobody but his wife and immediate family have seen him without his mask on. Their private lives are incredibly guarded.


For all things British and Lucha see Lucha Britannia's website



Part2ism and Miscellany
Part2ism and Miscellany have been collaborating on a variety of projects since their 2009 exhibition Artillery For Pleasure. Part2ism has been throwing up paint on walls since he was a kid and Miscellany’s variety of projects includes photographing the work of some of the first graffiti artists in New York and publishing an online political protest ezine, Empty Belly.

DD: What got you started on that path of masks?
Miscellany: We got together a year and half ago. Part2ism had started doing stuff with erotica and my stuff is all about using masks – the erotics of violent revolution, the erotics of resistance and transgression. So we started to work together.
Prt2: It was a weird kind of progression because when we met I had been using this gas mask image for five or six years as a logo. In the early 90s, when I was doing the photo-realist kind of stuff, I was using bodies and erotica images and something came into my mind – how could I fuse the two together? I thought I should bring back the photo-realism and bring back the masks. Miscellany hit me up, I looked at her photography stuff and it made a lot of sense for us to work together.

DD: What do you want the mask to do in your work?
Miscellany: It's about challenging things, people's ideas of beauty and vanity and how we see those things. Resistance to their views. There is a resistance movement behind the origins of graffiti. A lot of those young people who started it off were second generation immigrants. There was a politics behind what they did, and that can get missed. We don't have that will to resist or question now, people don't feel that they can make a difference. Part2ism had been using mixed media and I brought in the use of models. I helped bring the sexuality out.

Here's some photos of the guys putting up their latest wall


Izaskun Gonzales – Mask maker
Izaskun Gonzales runs clothing label Compulsive Behaviour, producers of hand-stitched luchador masks.

DD: A feminine Lucha Libre why? Can the girls play as hard as the boys?
Isaskun Gonzales: Of course they can! Lucha Libre women are, if not as big as the Lucha Libre guys, then certainly as hard. Also, there's a lot of people making male wrestling masks, Mexicans, for wrestling. My stuff isn't meant for the ring. Although, of course, you could give it a go. I didn't want to do the same thing as the rest of the market. I wanted to be a little more creative.

DD: What is a mask's appeal?
LG: Masks give people power to explore. That’s what I do with my work, explore, experiment. I’m fascinated by human behaviour, addiction, pleasure-seeking and any other form of extreme and compulsive behaviour. I feed my work with live experiences, by living on a stage full of clowns, mermaids, wrestlers, harlots, flying elephants, mutated giants, midgets and dolls.

DD: With regards your own masks what projects are there for the future?
LG: I'm very pleased to be collaborating with Nicolas Charbon, the man behind Atomefabrick. We've made one mask and are working on some other designs. We're working on something for Martin Degville, the singer of Sigue Sigue Sputnik. It'll be nice, simple and clean. It's going to be paired with a jacket and used for his Flaunt It show in December.

For more of her work check out Izaskun's website


Caron Geary AKA Feral
Caron Geary’s sheep-faced stage persona Feral has been spitting her brand of reggae and grime inspired pop since 2007.

DD: What prompted you to create your masked stage persona Feral?
Feral: Well, Feral appeared on the scene around 2002/2003. Before that I was making dance-based, pop based music. I was signed to a couple of different labels and I got tired with it. I just wanted to start again. Then I got ideas for new music but I didn't want to present myself in the way that I had done before. I didn't want to do it like that, I wanted to start from scratch, cover up my identity. So I spoke to my designer friend, Dean Bright, saying that I wanted to go again – “I've got some shitty sketches of some IRA meets fanatic meets Zulu meets Voodoo, totally tribal! Can you come up with something?”

DD: So what is its style?
Feral: There's a couple we call the sheep – the feral sheep. It's the antithesis of the black one. We were playing around with a black one for a while and then thought we'd add some little bunches, and it suddenly went albino! It plays with stereotypes, race, gender. I just want people to be like, 'What the fuck are you?!' When I get that response I know it's worked.

DD: Where does Caron meet Feral?
Feral: They are inseparable. There is no Caron and Feral. I am not someone going, 'I put the mask on (robot voice) I am now Feral'. They are one and the same. But it helps that people don't know about that. I like the fact that people don't know the difference. Course, when you get on it you put out. You give a level of performance. You can bring out things from within yourself. But I'm not a schizophrenic. I'm like a shy show-off.

Hear what Feral has to offer on her MySpace