Photos by Dutty Vannier
Model: Keisha Cassette
If you’ve lived in New York City, you’ve been there: That day when you’ve put off doing laundry for so long, you only have one pair left of clean clothes. New Yorkers are pathologically busy; getting to this state is a fact of life. But what if that last outfit you had left to get you to the laundromat was your Carnival costume? What would it be like to go about everyday tasks feather’d up in your wings and headdress? That’s the premise of this photo series from Dutty Vannier featuring model and DJ Keisha Cassette.
“That is the fun story you see in movies about New York,” Vannier says. “People work too much and their lives get crazy and you end up with no clothes. The idea was: What if she has nothing left but the carnival outfit? That’s why we shot in the laundromat, on the train, in a bodega.”
With Miami Carnival —the last big Caribbean Carnival celebration of the calendar year — starting up today and much of the region still in a state of shock following last month’s hurricanes, “Laundry Day,” featuring carnival wear from Sweet Eye Candy Designs, gives us a much-needed temporary cure for that Carnival Tabanca we’re all starting to feel right now.
