STYLE OVER SUBSTANCE

the day taxidermy got lifelessly sexy

So on a normal day I wouldn’t really consider wearing someone’s dead parakeet on my well tailored blazer lapel. But there’s a first time for everything apparently (apart from suicide because technically that would be your first and last time but don’t do it, it’s demode) so I ended up clicking on to a Ms Julia DeVille, a jewellery taxidermist from New Zealand whose aim is to preserve life by turning it into a masterpiece of beauty.

Ms DeVille was able to scale and gut a fish by the time she was five and took a peculiar interest in her grandmother’s fox-fur stole. She eventually did her Advanced Diploma in Gold and Silversmithing after meeting a fellow taxidermist in Melbourne, Aus called Rudy, and developed her own label called Disce Mori which in Latin translates to break up and to die. DeVille focuses on the 15^th to 18^th century mourning jewellery and acknowledges the brevity of life due to plague and other disease in the period and seems to love the use of Victorian aspects in her work. Her use of bizarre ideas when she designs is fabulous and it draws you in, she even uses human hair on some of her pieces (just think of it as extensions guys). But the rustic, steel foundry, dead wood feeling is totally on trend and it should be shared with all and lets hope we see the high street version very soon.

Disce Mori is available at stockists worldwide for more info go to Julia DeVille