U.K. latex artist/designer and certainly a world-class educator, Catasta Charisma has released a new manual for our most favorite material, Working with Latex.
If you are familiar with Charisma’s other guides, The Compendium of Rubber Garment Making, and his manual for the ultimate latex accessory The Hood, you know this is one fashion artisan who knows well of what he speaks. In this new guide C.C. (also known as Cat) shares his well-honed alt. couture creation skills across over five hundred pages for, what the book’s subtitle says “A beginners manual for working with sheet rubber.” Offering full patterns, techniques for working with sheet rubber, illustrations, and complete construction instructions, there’s not much Charisma doesn’t cover.
Sticking to essential latex wardrobe creations, be they latex masks, hoods, vests, and even dresses, in this digital book (Working with Latex is only available as a digital file) Charisma leads the reader through the nuts and bolts of setting up one’s own latex studio or workspace. He also teaches about prepping, cutting, finishing, and embellishing your textile art and reveals the level of difficulty for each pattern he gives. There are even eleven embedded video tutorials included (something you wouldn’t get in a print version). And although the book is geared to the beginner, no matter your skill level working with latex, everyone can learn something in these pages.
Catasta Charisma was born in 2009, as his online bio states, as a character in Second Life. In actual real life, Charisma is Heath Clark, born in 1970, in a small village near Sherwood Forest, where he still lives and works today. Not until his forties did he begin his art of “handling materials,” and it was just about five years ago when he shut his fashion shop to put his full effort into rubber tailoring. Working with ExxEss Latex as he has, he grew to be a designer, tailor, model, and author and someone very well respected in a particular fashion design field.
Considering what we do here at Dawnamatrix and the skill, time, attention, success, and failure needed do to it, we are especially thrilled to report on something as essential and well researched as Catasta Charisma new Working with Latex.
Order the book here.
