Gab Bois grew up watching her dad create hyperrealistic oil paintings in their basement. Not in a professional way, but in a way that a young Bois could tell that it was his true passion, and remains so to this day. She grew up in a household where creativity was gently encouraged—not forced upon her, but always around. She and her dad would peruse through art history books at the library and his resourcefulness, instincts, and natural talents were the gentle encouragement that she, and perhaps all young people, needed.
You could say that both a young and present day Gab Bois likes to play with her food: she crafted little characters out of corn husks and raw pasta adorned jewelry in the past, and popsicle skirts and jumbo shrimp earrings in the present. Playing with food was actually encouraged by her dad, who would plate meals in visually satisfying compositions and tell stories with food to make ingredients commonly rejected by kids more appealing.
Now, she’s not just playing with food, she’s playing with everything that you could imagine as long as it’s not what you would expect. She has turned headphones into eyeglasses, scrabble pieces into dresses, and vintage Motorola cellphones into compact mirrors. And, for Bois, the ideas never stop.
I connected with Gab Bois from a tiny room in Coveteur’s Manhattan office. We shared a laugh about technical difficulties and within moments had warmed to each other.. Her generosity conversationally can be attributed to her modesty—despite her many accomplishments (a collaboration with Elf Cosmetics and Essentia water, respectively)— and her honesty—without trying to pose as the most put together artist—about her creative process. Being messy goes hand-in-hand with being an artist and she has no problem admitting that. She mentions that her goal was once to be a kindergarten teacher and our conversation, as well as her playful approach to art, makes me think she would’ve made a great one.
Gab Bois
Tell me about the popsicle skirt. How did you come up with that?
"That had been made last year, it was ready to shoot, but then it was kind of the end of August and getting a bit colder. So we remade it this summer and I don’t know, there's something about the shape of tennis skirts that is super appealing to me. I think just the very defined straight panels can be twisted with so many different materials with the little tiny freezes. The short ones were just a no-brainer for a micro mini skirt. We did other ones in the last couple of years: a pencil skirt, pen skirts, cigarette skirts and stuff like that. So I guess it just became a bit of a muscle training in my brain where I was seeing different things as panels for skirts."
Gab Bois
Gab Bois
So were you creative as a kid? What art form did you start with?
"I say all the time that what I do today is an extension of everything I loved doing as a kid. So I was definitely more on the artsy side than on the sporty side. I loved just very repetitive tasks and hyper focusing on a project. And my dad, I grew up watching my dad doing oil painting in our basement. He never wanted to do any exhibitions or anything like that, but that's always been his true passion. He's retired now and his favorite thing to do is still to go into the basement and paint. He would paint these hyperrealistic still life’s and would take me to the library and we would look through art history books. He's also self-taught, so just seeing his resourcefulness and just following his instinct and just naturally being really good at it is something I think that gave me a lot of confidence. I never had this rhetoric in my head of: oh, you need to go through any specific academic steps to be good at what you want to do."
Is there another formative memory that you can share or something you did as a kid that relates to the work you do now?
"I think just the visual appeal of everyday things that we can repurpose and assemble in a way that makes it special all around has been something that was super present in my childhood, and that continues to be. Growing up there would be quite a few times where birds would fly into our windows and would unfortunately die. I remember being confronted with that kind of death very early on. We would take the bird, pick flowers and then organize it around where we buried the bird and just put together these very visually appealing compositions with natural elements. My dad would tell me that this is a good way for us to honor the bird's life."
How did you decide to start combining fashion with everyday items? What inspired you to start sharing and posting?
"I was first and foremost such a big consumer of content and imagery and visuals. I think that really helped develop my own taste for the kind of images that I like to see and I like to save for myself and look at. So that mixed in with just an actual pleasure in thinking of ideas and visual puns. I really started working with what I had accessible to me and the objects that I was seeing a lot that I was resonating towards. And it was almost by accident. I was studying to be a kindergarten teacher at the time, so it was really just a fun creative outlet, something to do after class. A bit of luck contributed to it building into something much bigger."
What do you think is interesting or significant about taking everyday items and making them into clothes and accessories?
"I think it's just giving a different life to things that we've seen a million times and that can feel mundane. It's kind of, to me, like the pleasure of having a really beautiful teapot or a collectible fucking lemon squeezer. I think we can make really ordinary things really magical in so many ways. And I do think it's more fun to do that with things that are relatable and that almost everyone has in their house."
Gab Bois
Gab Bois
Did you always know that you wanted to make clothes? What's your relationship to fashion?
"I love fashion in general. I love the concept of trends in general, whether it's fashion, decor, design, or lifestyle. I just like the ideas of trends and how they all relate to each other in some way. And I do think that now more than ever is a great time where a lot of industries overlap. We see a lot of collaborations between fashion houses and chefs. A lot of crossovers between fashion and food and fashion and tech. I think it's a really cool ecosystem right now and I think it kind of happened with people: fashion designers can also be DJs and visual artists and all that. I think it is just more rich for all of these industries to be bridging in some ways and joining forces. And I do relate to that a lot. Even just for myself and my practice, I love to explore as many mediums as I possibly can without necessarily meaning that I'm really good at all of them, but I am okay at a lot of them. So it's kind of nice to think about ideas and concepts without limitation to a specific industry or a specific medium."
Is there something about food that interests you in particular?
"I've always loved the visual quality of a lot of food ingredients, but there's also food ingredients that I really don't find appealing visually. It’s more fun to try and spin that and question why that is. I guess it comes from a personal fascination with it."
Do you have a creative process or routine?
"I'm someone who never lacks ideas, that's never been an issue. I lack structure on how to bring an idea from idea to reality, but ideas are never the problem. It’s usually a funneling process where there's a lot of ideas that are not good, or not good for right now, that maybe will be used for another project later down the line. But I think I like to sit down and just write down everything that comes to mind. And then I usually end up kind of trashing the first thirty things I wrote down and then everything that came out after the first fifteen minutes tends to be kind of where it's at. But other than that, I'm lucky now that I have this wonderful studio team with me. Our lead designer is super, super skilled, kind of a jack of all trades and self-thought like me, but better. She’s someone who I can talk to and say “So this is what we want to do. How do we go about it? Is it even possible?” That's the second part of the process. And then working side by side on the production and documenting the final piece is also just as important to me as the idea itself."
What is day in the life like for you?
"We have our studio here in Montreal. I was working by myself until 2021and now we're a small team of five. We have a lead project manager, we have my general manager that's been with me for several years now, we have our lead designer, and we have a logistics coordinator. So I usually get to focus on the creative part. All of the ideas are still mine, and I do direct the ship of the creative vision, but every day is so different. And that's kind of what keeps me so motivated. One day we're putting together these props for an exhibition and then the next day we're thinking about video concepts for something completely different. And then the day after, all of us are beating thousands of candies into a giant curtain."
Gab Bois
Gab Bois
What inspires you?
"A lot of different things, both random and specific. Movies more than ever now that I’ve started doing more and more video direction. I'm so obsessed with set design. I do think that if video direction is something that I pursue even further, my practice will be pretty defined by set design and aesthetic first. Even if I feel completely tapped out and that I can't take in any more stimulation or inspiration, movies are something that always work. I'm also super inspired by problem solving in general. The way my manager goes about solving technical problems is just as creative as the work that I do. I love seeing people who don't describe themselves as creative be so creative in ways that I could never think about."
Do you have a favorite individual piece that you've made?
"I have a few, but off the bat what comes to mind is the big lasagna hair bow that I made. It went super viral. That was so special because that idea was going to be a filler post at the end of an Instagram carousel about pasta. But when I saw how it looked in the photo, I was like, “no, this is its own thing.” I underestimated it so much and then it surprised me with how it came out.
A couple years ago I did this beaded dress made with Scrabble tiles. That's a special one to me because it was in the middle or towards the end of Covid and people were allowed to come to my house one at a time with the rules in Canada. So I had so many individual friends throughout the span of a month that helped me drill little holes in the Scrabble tiles. That and the conversations and the time spent together made it special. The piece is a good memory of a lot of my friendships."
Gab Bois
What are you doing next?
"I’m trying to get out of my own way. I do feel like I can be stubborn and a perfectionist with how I do things and how I want the process to look, but these days I'm really reflecting on how I can make life as simple as it can be, rather than just sticking myself in this loop of adding more and more projects and getting stuck in this loop of a never ending to-do list. I recently had the chance to direct a music video for a Canadian artist called Night Lovell with one of my best friends and that’s going to come out in the fall. I think a lot of fruit will be coming to a ripe age this fall. It's been a good year. I'm heading to India in two weeks for a design conference, so that's super exciting. So yeah, just happy to be alive."
