[rhythmic electronic music]
- Hi, I'm Parma Ham.
And today I'm going to be getting ready.
I'm going to be doing huge hair, huge makeup
and big PVC clothes.
The first step is actually shaving the sides of my head,
which I've already done.
Then I applied moisturizer, then I put on primer.
So without primer, everything slides.
I guess I would describe my style as Goth-inspired.
It's fetish-inspired and it's high fashion.
I pretty much only wear black.
So I developed my style, I guess for the last 10 years
has been like a very slow evolution,
which has just been growing ever since maybe the age of 12.
I guess 12 was the age when my parents stopped dressing me.
It was quite simple, it was just wearing black,
wearing bondage.
And then it just escalated when I moved to London
and I met more colorful creatures that inspired me
to go one step further.
And I think growing in confidence as well,
every passing year, I become a bigger person.
And I do bigger hair, I do bigger looks.
I kind of feel more within myself to be able to do that.
So I grew up in Guildford, Surrey.
It was a very conservative town.
Incredibly boring.
I remember there was one moment around 16
and I was wearing blue jeans and a white hoodie,
and I was just running to the shops.
And I caught my reflection in the mirror
and I was so horrified at what I saw
that I vowed to never wear something like that again,
which is interesting, 'cause it was more,
I was aware of what I didn't want to be
than what I wanted to be.
The next step is I use foundation and I put it on a sponge,
which is damp.
Because the sponges already damp, it actually stops
the foundation soaking into the sponge.
It creates a softer finish with less inconsistencies
and less streaks.
So there was really no one else around me
in my hometown I could really look up to
or take any...
There was no tribe there at all.
And it was only through being online
and through Facebook and Instagram,
could I actually see that there were other people
that are just living their lives openly and freely.
And they always seem to be based in London.
I was always attracted to Goths and punks.
I don't know why.
Well, Goth is very multifaceted.
There's so many different sides to it.
I was inspired by the first wave of Goths
in the late '70s, early '80s.
People like Bauhaus, Siouxie, Virgin Prunes.
The kind of fluidity in expression,
which was regardless of gender, there was shaved heads,
long hair, makeup.
Any conversations about gender or sexuality,
it was almost irrelevant.
There was such sexual ambiguity.
And I aspire to be that in a way,
which is to be other, but to also be very sexual about it
because the world is so used to binaries,
which isn't just male or female,
or top and bottom or sub and dom, et cetera.
[chuckles]
Because we're always told that opposites attract,
but to not really be anything,
but still be attractive has always been the goal.
It's a difficult moment because you're trying to
make sense of the world, and particularly yourself.
I saw style as a way to in a way, ignore those questions
and just start developing an identity.
And then I use a concealer to cover some gremlin things.
When I first came to London, I was really desperate
to find these people that I'd seen images of
online in magazines.
Looking at it, I was a little bit disappointed
because when you type in "Goth", you might come up
with runway images of Alexander McQueen or Dior.
Stunning designs and models that are draped
in these exquisite fabrics.
And actually that was like a disconnect,
'cause that wasn't in the clubs.
That wasn't who I was seeing anywhere.
But I went to places like Slimelight and Electrowerkz
and I found some tribe.
I found some of my chosen family, I guess.
So the next step is, I draw a loose outline
of where I want my eye makeup to be.
It's so much more fun and rewarding to get dressed up
and go hang out with people.
It's good to be seen, you know?
But seen amongst people that you want to be seen with.
So that inspired me to create my own club, which is Wraith.
I wanted to show off the work of my friends.
I like creatives to come and feel inspired
to meet other people.
To have DJs and other performers.
We've had hosts.
I guess I was first drawn to fetish
mostly because of the liberal environments that exists
and to have people just being themselves
and being comfortable, kind of makes me comfortable.
I found it increasingly difficult to exist online.
We know what would get us banned and what won't,
but somehow we still manage to
slip through the cracks there.
In a way it censors our work from the active canon.
It's a sad moment for where we are in humanity,
that we've handed the keys to Zuckerberg
and these awful people.
I'm just gonna start smoking this out and blending it.
So it's a bit softer and I'll go over this in other colors.
Documentation, I think is vital in these club environments
because it liberates.
And I think that liberation is important
because at the moment it's, for me,
it's obviously very centered around London.
To not share any images to not have any documentation,
it creates elitism that is only for the few
and not for the many.
Not always is the collaboration
that I do with my partner, Salvia.
The project has manifested its way in different directions.
So we did a VR project, with a collaborator called Ulgener,
we 3-D scanned our bodies and then adjusted them
so they're slightly more alien-like.
So it was very much designing for an avatar.
The way we put ourselves across online
is an avatar in itself because it's like a manipulation
or a characterization of who we think we are.
Okay.
And now I'm just going to blend the black a tiny bit
into the brown.
Now I sharpen the edges with my foundation.
The foundation cuts through the blending
and creates this very straight line.
I now have a sponge with a straight edge.
I'm just gonna slowly blend that on a bit.
I have a degree of responsibility to what I've been doing.
When I was growing up there wasn't really any kind of
role models or anyone else saying
it's okay not to pick a gender or pick a sexuality.
There are figures like Pete Burns or Boy George,
which were incredible, but the conversation
was never really there.
Maybe they possibly started it in their own way.
There is a bit of sadness because there is a
intergenerational conflict, even though I feel like
they led the way in being themselves.
One by one, they've all come out with transphobic terms.
I'm optimistic that the next generation
are gonna grow up in a time
where things are a lot easier and the kind of language
and discourse is already out there.
Okay, now I've finished my eye, so I'm going to
do my contour now, which is on my cheeks and my jaw.
I squeeze the brush head, so it's kind of flat.
It goes to loosely from the top of my ear
in the direction of my lips.
Then I'm going to do my lips.
I've gone for brown because it matches my eye.
Okay, so my face is done
and I'm going to start doing my hair.
It's a long process that takes around two hours,
so I'm only going to be showing you a small part of it.
But it's the same process just repeated.
And go in to the root as far as possible.
I squeeze it and I hold it for around 15 seconds.
I move up and do the next bit.
I definitely had a peak hair moment,
which is where I was doing,
I would be eight foot tall with shoes and hair.
I can't really do that anymore
because hair spray formulas have changed,
that they're no longer glue-like,
so they can't really hold huge, huge styles,
which is unfortunate.
I don't do the very end.
That's meant to be crimped.
Then it's important to spray and try
and get the roots as much as possible as well.
I would then go to the root and start there
and just keep going.
And that creates this texture, which is kind of, it molds.
[chuckles]
Once it's in shape, I'm going to use a hairdryer
to put it into shape and using the jet
of the hairdryer to shape it.
I'm going to go and finish this and get dressed
in the other room, so I'll be back in a minute.
[low booming electronic music]
Okay, so now I'm dressed.
I've got my PVC boots, PVC gloves,
PVC top, PVC skirt, PVC cape.
And my second coat and I'm so done.
It is physically quite taxing to move around,
to get in cars, to get on buses, to get on trains,
because I occupy so much space through hair
and through clothing, I can't really fit into anything,
but at the same time, I love the impracticality of it.
People will have comfort clothes.
My comfort is more in something where I feel myself
or something where I have an attraction to it.
And it's that kind of love of beauty
where I feel so much more comfortable.
And when I see other people doing the same thing,
I see what they're going through,
and that to me is beautiful.
And that is beauty.
[ethereal industrial music]