"There isn’t one image that I wish existed in particular but I do wish there were more editorials highlighting people of colour. It’s extremely important for me to show beauty in all its forms,” says 19 year-old Cupid, the Brooklyn based Instagrammer behind the obsessively followed @cryingdoves691.
“A digital expedition of light and colour” is how Cupid describes what’s on their feed. What does this mean? “I’m exploring a multitude of images and themes through everything I find on the internet. I’m taking my followers on a journey via visuals.”
And that journey is about seeing fashion as more than fashion: as light, and colour, and art, and the way it all links up to form a bigger picture. “While I love posting runway shots, I also try to feature my favourite sculptures and installations. My page is a super conglomeration of everything that I find beautiful – one post can be an Haute Couture gown and the next an image of a bloody mouth.”
Having such a strong identity is what makes Cupid’s Instagram stand out from other fashion focused accounts: there’s a lightness to the images curated, lots of white, plexiglass, iridescence. Even the darker imagery – the aforementioned bloody mouth – feels like it has a lightness behind it.
Cupid’s feed is as satisfying to look at as a whole creation as it is to zoom in on details from Acne SS00 and Hermès SS02, with its ebbing themes transitioning subtly – slowly shifting from a focus on powder blue, to heavy prints, to bright pinks. “Currently I’ve been really inspired by eco friendly fashion and sustainable clothing as well as the colour seaweed green. Most of the time my ‘aesthetic’ revolves around a certain colour and how I associate that colour with moments in fashion. And themes come from anywhere – the more art and culture I digest, the more I have to regurgitate.”
@cryingdoves691 is very much a fashion account, but for Cupid it’s about tracing links through fashion imagery and finding images which accurately represent their mental state at the time, “I also love to feature images by upcoming designers and art pieces that I think need more appreciation,” they explain.
@cryingdoves691
