Anika Leila was in elementary school when she first saw the faces.
“I’d vandalize the desks, I’d be drawing on the partitions, my art book — I even have a Post-it Note from my secondary school art teacher saying, ‘stop drawing those faces — they’re scary,’” laughed Leila.
Now 25 years old, the Central Saint Martins fashion design graduate has turned her affinity for faces into an inventive signature, using expired and discarded makeup products to color them on dresses, tube tops, skirts and absolutely anything else she will be able to construct.
“I’ve all the time wanted to investigate people’s faces — I used to stare as much as possible in order that I could ensure I didn’t forget,” said Leila, who grew up in London and would make annual summertime trips to see her grandmother, a seamstress, in India. “She taught me the fundamentals of stitching. Plenty of her work — quite just like what I do now — was very much about freestyling.”
When Leila was 16 years old, she bought her first sewing machine, and around the identical time, the Golden Era of YouTube beauty influencers reached its peak.
“I wouldn’t say I used to be very caught up in that [era], but people thought I actually liked that stuff, so I used to be given plenty of makeup as gifts,” said Leila, who amassed heaps of daring lipsticks and colourful eye shadow palettes that quietly expired within the years that followed.
Fast-forward to her time at Central Saint Martins, Leila found herself in a creative rut induced by her desire to create without contributing to waste. “The pollution and waste of the style industry are inclined to impact people who find themselves from where I’m from — I didn’t need to be a part of that,” said Leila, who had previously experimented with drawing on paper using makeup, and realized she could paint her garments the identical way.
“I’ve undergone coloured mascaras, lip liners, eye shadows — I’m all the time asking my friends, ‘have you ever cleared out your makeup recently? Do it again,’” said Leila, whose go-to brands for painting include Anastasia Beverly Hills (“great pigmentation”), Nars Cosmetics and Kylie Cosmetics.
Leila uses the makeup products to create all type of drawings, but it surely’s her faces specifically — which range from looking terrified, to pensive, to undecipherable — which have caught the eye of TikTok, where her videos have garnered greater than 300,000 likes.
“My artwork may be very much based in my personal life and my mood, and I believe that reflects well in what I produce,” she said. “I all the time get a bunch of questions like, ‘What is that this? I don’t understand,’ and I’m like, ‘don’t worry — it’s artwork.’”
After graduating, Leila launched her namesake direct-to-consumer brand offering a spread of beautified tie-back tube tops, drapey dresses and skirts, but her primary business at once is custom clothing orders and canvases.
“I’m working to exhibit in a gallery, which, hopefully, will occur in 2024,” said Leila, adding that while her drawings are indeed a mirrored image of her own experiences, “seeing quite a bit more people now trying to know and interact with my work, putting their very own perception on it — I like that.”
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