Motherboard

One couldn’t really say Reid Peppard is obsessed with dead things, exactly. More with finding beauty in and making use of discard. Thus, she builds purses and hair combs out of found animal carcasses. Recently featured on CNN, Reid and her work were called “garbage… stupid… crazy… disgusting” by people happy to wear leather and eat meat and eggs procured cheaply even though the lives of the producing animals are painful, cramped, and drugged from beginning to end; while Reid’s raw products lived scampering or high-flying through the streets, sewers, and skies of London right up until their demise.

She is my favorite designer. She is so pleasurable! I would wear nothing but her taxidermied collection if I could afford it. In a mass and indistinguishing consumption society, it is reassuring that there are some things that remain unaffordable. And so I wear none of her stuff. But since this interview, she and I continue to email each other stories about German cannibals and penis-mutilators. The best things in life are either too expensive (everything Reid makes) or free (gossip and love).

VICE: Wow, you look so much younger than I thought. Looking at the fashion that you make, I thought you’d be 80!
REID: No, I’m 23.

Everyone agrees an owl or a rabbit is cute and decorative but a rat or a pigeon is repulsive. Why don’t you?
I grew up with an aunt who was amazed at dead things her cat would bring in, so I was raised not going “ew!” to bugs or dead animals. But it’s all nature. It’s all interesting.

But does a rat head look beautiful to you?
Definitely. It’s a thing of beauty and it’s fascinating.

Do you worry about germs?
No, not at all. The process of taxidermy sterilizes the skin; there’s no way anything could get through the tanning process. If I get a body from the street or my cat, I freeze it first, which kills any living microbes. After that, I skin it with gloves on.

Are you interested at all in human corpses?
I am. I’m struck with how similar these little mammals are to you and I. A little mouse—all of its organs and muscles are on a scale like us. But humans don’t preserve very well. We’re not hairy enough. Human skin is very thin. The process of tanning would turn my skin into a greasy, brown leather. It wouldn’t look human.

Shrunken heads are black and puny and kind of featureless.
Exactly. Taxidermy works because the fur gives the illusion of the animal it once was.

One angry commenter suggested your next project could employ aborted human fetuses, decapitated human parts from accidents, or discarded mastectomy tissue. That would certainly make interesting clothing, but would it be illegal?
Yeah, and I don’t understand why. Part of why I do what I do is because it evokes a strong visceral reaction—makes people angry or happy or sad. It’s strongly emotive, taxidermy. Especially over here in the UK, people don’t like to look at each other. Once I was walking down the street and a motorist fell over onto the sidewalk and people just walked around him. It’s a British thing. I like how that can stall people’s reaction. So you can be standing right next to someone for quite a while before they realize you have two dead rats on top of your head hissing and holding a skull.

I saw that… I thought those rats were makin’ luv!
Another woman thought I did kissing rats. I try not to be anthropomorphic. But in answer to your question about using dead human parts, I never understood why people think animals are different from human bodies. We die, animals die. I don’t find any of it gross. The people who make horrifically negative comments about what I do will, say, wear leather without thinking, will eat meat, drive cars that pollute the atmosphere, then turn around and say my taking waste and preserving it is somehow wrong. I didn’t get any hate mail until Perez Hilton blogged about me. That’s when the angsty 16-year-old emo girls found out about me and that I’m a MURDERER.

Do you kill any of the animals?
NO! [laughs] But people just see the dead thing and think what they want to think.

People got so angry at you for using a dead guinea pig because it’s a pet, but think about how pets live. They’re put in a tiny cage barely bigger than their body. Pet guinea pigs are probably insane in there. Each one probably thinks it’s the last of its species. Lonely and cramped and insane. That’s what pet owners do to their living thing, and all you did was take a dead body and turn it into a beautiful hair comb.
So many of these purebreds are bred into insanity as well! They’re bred to be as dumb and limp as possible. People don’t want an animal who acts like an animal.

Would you put a kitten’s head on a hat?
If it died naturally. I do intend on doing a pet series. I’ve had people offer up their pets after death.

To be turned into fashion?
Yeah. I mean, I have a degree in fine arts. It’s still new to be pigeonholed into being a fashion designer.

You do home decor as well.
[Laughs] Yes. Well, I was doing these shields—

Where you have little mouse heads mounted on boards instead of like a buck’s head.
Or a mouse’s behind. That’s a popular one.

It has so much more of an impact when instead of hanging it on a wall, you let it touch you, when you wear on your body or in your hair a creature that we think of as carrying the bubonic plague. Then you have the bubonic aura. Do you identify with discarded or neglected or not-seen elements?
I find these overlooked artifacts of modern day humanity fascinating, but I’m not sure I would say I am a piece of trash. Is that what you mean?

You know the philosopher Julia Kristeva? She says—I think—that an individual or a society, in order to grow up, has to come to the point of rejecting “the mother,” meaning what is cuddly and sweet. So as long as you go on having Hallmark tastes, you remain childlike, blind to the world outside Mother’s loving, protective embrace and to what she told you not to touch because it was dirty. According to Kristeva, your stuff—celebrating the refuse, the repulsive—helps us grow up. Opens our mind into unsafe thought.
I see what you mean.

This would include other people on the edges—drag queens and kings, schizophrenics, the unpopular…
But for me, I find what I do not at all weird but rather entirely sensible. And my friends are…probably a larger than normal percentage are drag queens and “abnormal” people.

What kind of people buy your pieces?
Mixed. I thought my only market would be in London or maybe Paris, not at all in America.

Do you think of Americans as staid?
I’m American, and I grew up being considered bizarre just for dressing differently and breeding stag beetles.

Why do you have a British accent?
I don’t!

Yes you do!
No!

You sound like Madonna!
Aaaagh! That’s horrible!

Sorry.
Over here, I’m quite obviously American. But I don’t go home much, and my boyfriend and pretty much all my friends are British, so my accent swings.

Are you from old money?
A little bit, yeah. And I come from a family of actors.

Maybe it’s just an old money/family-of-actors accent. How much do your pieces cost? For example, what would the eviscerated rat purse run?
About 800 pounds.

$1,400 American? And what are your costs for tanning and—
It varies. I try to use fancy stones in the eyes and stuff. And I don’t have a stock of items. I have to hand make everything. It costs more due to the time it takes.

Would you ever want an assembly line of workers?
Oh God, no.

You don’t ever want a line in Target?
No. I would love to have helpers, but I think a really big part of my work is that it’s not, you know, outsourced to China. I find these animals around London or friends find them and bring them over to me and then I make them personally.

But only rich people can have your things.
I know. That’s the biggest problem I have. In a fine-art degree, it’s about “your practice” and they never help you with the finance behind it. I would love to have lower prices but right now it’s a full-time job and it traps you. If it takes me two weeks to make a piece, I have to charge enough for it to survive.

Eventually there will be a rip-off and there will be fake rat purses that poor children in Indonesia will be making, with marbles for eyes.
I know!

How do you want your corpse to be treated?
I’m a donor, so take my organs, any you want. I’m happy to have my body pickled or whatever. I don’t have a will yet, but I would like to see about having my head turned into a shrunken head. That would be a good last word.

Would your hand be turned into a necklace for a loved one?
Sure. Turn it into a catcher’s mitt.

Did you see the exhibition of dead Germans who donated their bodies? The skin wasn’t dark or shrunken at all.
They use plasticides. It’s incredible. [gasps] There was a gorgeous exhibit recently, freakishly lifelike, beautifully made wax corpses as well as really grotesque reproductions of syphilis and what other STDs looked like in waxwork. Beautiful stuff. I think a lot of that comes from Germany too for some reason.

LISA CARVER
PHOTOS BY VIKTOR VAUTHIER

from Viceland