GEEKPR0N goes one on one with Artifice Clothing

Artifice Clothing is a PVC designer based out of Toronto, Canada. I have been a super fan for years and an avid wearer of their brand in the fetish scene. Artifice’s popularity has recently grown in the cosplay community with their Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy corsets getting a lot of positive feedback on social media. I recently had a chance to speak with founder Emily Rishea about her company and got to know more about Artifice Clothing.

GEEKPR0N: What got you interested in fashion design?

Emily Rishea:  Straight up being poor and unable to buy goth/fetish clothing. There just wasn’t the same availability and range of alternative clothing that there is now when I started sewing and designing 15 years ago (OMG I’m old). You couldn’t really buy stuff online like you can now and what there was was out of my price range. I made stuff for myself and friends and then transitioned from selling stuff on eBay to selling out of www.artificeclothing.com and Etsy. We worked on a LOT of photoshoots at first, and but it was a great experience since every new shoot meant new designs and improving on construction. Working with a sewing team and steadily building up a large amount of patterns that we can mix and match to create new designs has helped a ton. So has learning how to integrate glow in the dark tubing and faux fur into our line and improving our fit, sewing process, and quality over time.

GP: Your company is highly renowned in the fetish fashion and cosplay industry.  Are there any areas or other subcultures you would like to expand Artifice into?

ER:  Thanks! That’s satisfying and kind of scary to hear since we’re actually just a 4 person company working out if a tiny office. But we’ve worked on a lot of great photoshoots that I’m glad have gotten exposure online and gained us some great customers as well. I am personally trying to push the faux fur stuff just because its a fun new material that we’ve been working on. Its makes kind of a mess in our office and takes a LONG time to sew and line but its an interesting challenge from a design perspective. Actually my corsetry experience combined with tailoring has transitioned well with fur construction. We sew boning into parts of the clothing to give it structure and every piece needs to be tailored exactly to give it a 3D shape.

GP:  Was there an individual in particular who has been seen wearing your items that you were over the hill about? Who would you love to see wearing Artifice clothing?

ER:  Not a specific person really but there’s something awesome about seeing our clothing in customer photoshoots. The best part isn’t the non stop unpaid celebrity/magazine stylist requests (we unfortunately have to say no because my staff gets paid in cash not bragging rights…) it’s seeing customer pics online who’ve used things we’ve made as part of their own awesome photoshoots, cosplays, or even just your Instagram selfies. So to everyone who’s actually bought stuff from us instead of trying to get it for free, we fucking love you ;). Thanks for supporting us. We spend sooooo much time sewing, sourcing all the materials, and working late days and weekends to get everything finished so the thank you e-mails, Instagram and Facebook tags, and customer submission pics mean more than you can imagine. Thanks!

GP:  Have you had your label featured in any motion pictures and television?

ER:  Yeah a few! I’d say most of the larger projects we work on are for styling for event companies and photoshoots instead of film.

GP:  What is your favorite cosplay design?

ER:  Without a doubt doing Harley interpretations. Its just such an iconic costume and the colour scheme lets us use some of our favourite patterns and designs for cosplay versions while still keeping the recognizable “Harley” look. I’d say my second choice is the glow in the dark tubing we work with. Its extremely time consuming, has a very high material cost so we have to charge a lot more than we want to, destroys a million sewing needles LOL, but when its done it looks fucking awesome! Especially when we sew clear PVC with glow in the dark accents, and steel boning. It is certainly not the most comfortable thing to wear but just looks damn cool and robotic.

GP:  What cosplays can we hope to see from Artifice in the near future?

ER:  Cruella is our next themed photoshoot and its gong to be awesome! Not because we hate puppies… but because its going to be fun to do a stark black/white fashion shoot with lots of opporutnites to use faux fur. After that, who knows… I’m looking forward to doing some outdoor shoots when the weather is nicer and another glow in the dark themed set since its been a while since we’ve done one of those :-).

Thanks again to Emily for taking the time to talk to us.

Artifice is vastly growing their cosplay collection, and coming out with new designs every year. I know I have my eyes on that Ivy corset and you’ll definitely be seeing me rocking some of her items at the conventions to come!

Let us know what are some of your favorite looks from Artifice in the comments below!