Radiant Decay

Florence Rose shot at Nhow London.

A talk with rising talent Florence Rose, appearing in a pastel goth story by Marco Giuliano and Anca Macavei, shot in the perfectly vibrant setting of Nhow Hotel in London.
Florence wears chainmaille HOLYHELL

Where does this interview find you (both literally and mentally)?

In London around midnight during a period of a lot of change, scary and exciting change.

You are a modern multidisciplinary of sorts — besides being a model, an erratic online presence and instagram maven extraordinaire, you’re also an artist with a growing portfolio of work. What led you down this unique life path?

Growing up a lot of the people around me were very creative, I was very lucky to be able to see creativity as something to be explored ‘full time’ and something I could make a career in. My mother specifically encouraged my creativity, we would sketch together and write and paint, she was an arts student when she was about my age in the 90s. When I was very young I think the first career I wanted was to be an arts teacher and then a painter which changed into film and theatre during my years at arts university and then onto music.. and so on.

You’ve recently added another gem to said portfolio of work with the release of “I Am Your Daughter” — your first single with a complementary music video. Moving from one artistic medium to another in a seemingly unrestrained manner might look easy, but how vulnerable does it feel to make your musical debut with such an intimate song?

All of my work could be seen as vulnerable, as it is all so personal however sharing this track was far less daunting than sharing past films which have felt more intimate to me. I also wouldn’t say this is my most intimate track, I have a second release coming up on the 24th November and this one probably takes the win.

The music video for “I Am Your Daughter” is packed with symbolic imagery. How did you come up with the artistic vision for it?

The vision for the music video came through working with Grace Capewell who directed the video and came to me with the idea of the axe dance routine, inspired by a piece of contact dance theatre. We took a lot of the core reasons for me making the track, the love and pain that come with feeling everything very intensely and deeply, and found our best way way to portray this with actions and visuals.

Representations of femininity and queerness are recurring themes in your work, and they are almost always broken through the lens of psychological horror, violence and surreal imagery. What constitutes the contemporary female experience in your opinion? Why do we feel as attached to the character of the femme fatale today as we did to the likes of Salome, Circe, etc. hundreds of years ago?

I think there still a lot of repressed anger in women that make them feel connected to or understood by these iconic names. There has also been a big online culture of ‘off-putting’ and weird/unhinged girls coming together to share their love of tortured female characters and artists. This ‘femcel’ ‘girl interrupted’ core has definitely opened up this idea of the modern shared female experience, even though its at times slightly annoying and probably not very healthy to consume digitally.

In “I Am Your Daughter” you are at once the holy father, the daughter and the lover. To this holy trinity of sorts you have cemented feelings of desperation and longing for salvation through genuine, unreserved love. Would you like to expand on this?

The upcoming EP is named My Lust Is My Religion, so its kind of a play on this, obsessive love, ritualistic love and desperate love. All the tracks have a sense of longing for something more, something deeper and bigger than yourself.

Let us briefly return to representations of femininity in your work. You propose that showing women as perpetrators of violence rather than victims is an empowerment mechanism and ultimately a way to reclaim a sense of authority, which has historically been stripped away from us. Why do in your opinion so many people find comfort in this otherwise unsettling trope?

Haha have you read my dissertation? I don’t really follow this narrative anymore, I think I watched Jennifers Body too many times. However in the case of that film her eating boys is 100% deserved and many could say empowering, if you were to read it as a rape revenge film, which I would say is quite a valid read.

Are we to expect new projects following the success of “One White Feather”? What about new music?

Yes! I have a second track coming out on November 24th, called ‘Isn’t Life Beautiful?’ and this has an accompanying very short film and I also have an EP coming up soon <3

bra UNDRESS CODE, overlayed top DISTURBIA, necklace HOLYHELL
chainmaille by HOLYHELL
chainmaille by HOLYHELL
top MATACOMPLEX, tights WOLFORD
dress AMEN, lingerie UNDRESS CODE
jacket ANNAKIKI
dress AMEN

Radiant decay

Credits:

Artist: Florence Rose / @florenceros.e
Agency: Milk Management / @milkmodelmanagement
Photography: Marco Giuliano / @marcogiulianoph
Styling: Anca Macavei / @ancamacavei
Interview: Sedef Nihat / @sedefnihat
Location: Suite and Penthouse at Nhow London / @nhowlondon

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