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Odette Picaud

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Odette Picaud is a jewelry and clothing collection that acts as a conduit on an esoteric journey into the past, through adornment, memory, connection and history, as seen through the eyes of Odette.  Designer Fanny Crenn is based in Brittany, France, while Odette, who operates as muse for the creation of the collection, lives in Crenn’s heart and her mind.  Crenn’s jewelry and clothing have the appearance of a particularly eclectic designer’s mood board, or an artist’s journal, filled with mementos and visual memories from the past, captured in the mix of eclectic items that range form old photos to leather gloves.  While her clothing is a flight of fantasy, that wouldn’t look out of place adorning Titania from Shakespeare’s play of about the wooded fairly world, A Midsummer Nights Dream.

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Sourcing her materials from flea markets, second hand stores and attic sales, Crenn references the Emmaus Movement, the collective fight against all forms of exclusion, started by French Catholic priest Henri Marie Joseph Groues.  The charity that continues in his name is the oft times used source of Crenn’s ephemera that become her jewelry and clothing line.  Only using vintage finds, Crenn has a particular penchant for gloves, leather, rosaries, rabbit poop (yes really the poop of rabbits), textile scraps, photos, feathers, rodent bones, pearls, lace, medals, buttons and toys!  That eclectic list of items act as the source material for her every collection, while her creative process imbues the faded ephemera with a dark undertone, as if conceived for the central character of Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride.

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Crenn’s affair with artifacts from the past and their re-contextualization into ethereal jewelry and clothing, started during her art studies back in 2004, at the university of Rennes.  She began working with the past and preserving memories, producing a collection of old and strange clothes made from blankets for her end of year diploma exhibition.  There in the relics from the past, reinterpreted for the present, appeared Odette, making her into Crenn’s every design in some shape or form.

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The inspiration for Odette Picaud originally came from a found suitcase in a waste center, full of old papers and family pictures, labeled “Mum’s things.”  Mum was Odette Picaud, a name and face that Crenn immediately connected with.  The visual connection of Odette Picaud’s memories from the past, has formed the basis of Odette Picaud collection ever since.  Each item is unique and hand made, assembled and sewn in Crenn’s Western France showroom in the countryside of Brittany.  Often thought of as strange, Crenn’s work is nevertheless a tangible connection to the past, with each creation acting as a visual and tactile memory and conduit to her past.

The birth of her son in 2004 punctuated the start of Odette Picaud, with the birth of her daughter since, heralding a new journey of creative connection into the past, with the creation of strange and curious dolls in the same vein as the jewels and the clothing.

Website www.odettepicaud.com