Capturing StarChild’s Galactic Look

One of the aspects of being an artist that I really love is collaboration. True collaboration, where each party brings their expertise and creativity to the table in pursuit of art that is greater than just the sum of its parts. This is part of why I value working with Star so much. For this look in particular, she told me she wanted to do something space-themed. My first thought was, “Duh, how has this not been done yet? You Are StarChild, girl!” This is what made me realize that this couldn’t be any basic, galaxy design; I had to personalize it as much as possible.

After going through photos from some of her performances, I noticed that she uses blues in her looks quite often, specifically a pale, sky blue. The rest of the color pallet was created around this baby blue, using deeper blues and purples to compliment and pink and yellow to add contrast. Since we were doing the night sky, I thought it would be nice to incorporate some constellations. Being a bit of an astronomy nerd, I wanted a few of them to be actual constellations and not just random dots.

When I was trying to decide on which patterns to use and where to put them, I came up with the idea of using Star’s head instead of having her wear a wig. Not only did this give me a larger canvas to work with, I felt like it was the truest representation of Star. Being nonbinary gives her a unique kind of fluididity. She is masculine and feminine, everything in between, both and neither all at once. Just to customize it that much more, we thought the constilation on the crown of her head should be her zodiac sign, Taurus.

In the end, the look came out better than I could have ever imagined it would. I was blown away by the photos; Star totally brought the look to life, and the photography couldn’t be more stunning. It was a great experience with a badass team.

Aaryn McPhetres