NYLON - June 2008 - (Page 62) myspace.com / possothespat Find out where POSSO the DJ’s next gig is. They’ll have you dancing on the ceiling. : LADIES OF THE NIGHT the insider MARYLOUISE PELS AND VANESSA GIOVACCHINI— THE GIRLS BEHIND POSSO THE SPAT—KNOW HOW TO GET THE PARTY STARTED. BY KATE WILLIAMS. PORTRAIT BY ORLY OLIVIER If you haven’t been a part of it, then you’ve at least witnessed it: girls who swear they’re Best Friends Forever—until they have a fight and stop talking. Such is not the case with the duo behind POSSO the Spat. Marylouise Pels and Vanessa Giovacchini are both 24, tall, thin, brunette, and gorgeous, and they both grew up in Sonoma, California, where they met in ballet class at age four. “We’ve always known each other, but we became best friends our sophomore year of high school, when we had every class together,” says Giovacchini. “Basically, everyone who went to our school wore sweatshirts, but we loved fashion so we dressed up every day and wore heels,” Pels says. “We didn’t really go to any keg parties,” Giovacchini adds, “because we couldn’t walk up the hill in our heels.” For their senior project, they put on a giant fashion show where they designed every piece of clothing, and hired the models and the DJs. The show even had a breakdancing interlude. “We sold out two nights and made money!” Giovacchini says. “It was kinda crazy.” “Kinda crazy” defines most of the projects Pels and Giovacchini have undertaken to date. After graduating from college, they moved to Los Angeles, where they followed up on an idea they came up with while traveling through Europe: to create spats, a footwear accessory that covers part of the shoe, and which was popular at the turn of the 20th century. “We felt that if we were going to do this, it was now or never,” Giovacchini says, “because we could tell that the way fashion was going, it was time for spats, and it was crazy, because Prada did it the same time we did. It was kind of out of the collective unconscious, I suppose.” If anyone could pull off a line based around an archaic accessory, it’s Giovacchini and Pels. They see spats as merely one extension of POSSO, a name that they chose because it means ‘I am able to’ in Italian. They also DJ, under the name POSSO The DJ, and have a residency at Hyde in Los Angeles. “It’s super cool, and now we just pack people in there and play whatever we want and dance on the furniture,” Pels says. They recently returned from a Canadian tour with M.I.A.’s DJ Low B, which included playing at Peter Gatien’s Toronto super-club, Circa. “It was like 11:15 and we were playing to 1,500 people and they told us, ‘We’re sorry it’s dead tonight.’ Whatever, are you kidding me? Everyone there was really rad, too,” Giovacchini recalls. The duo admit that their POSSO style frequently changes and say it will continue to do so, but one element has remained constant for more than a year: Their crazy fake nails. “One of our first DJ gigs was Jennifer Hudson’s Oscar party, and right before that, we got rhinestones with black French tips and were like, ‘Nails are dope!’” Giovacchini says. “You can have whatever kind of outfit, and then the nails just speak for themselves.” “Whenever you look down at your hands, you’re like ‘Oh! Haha,’” Pels explains. “It’s kind of like spats in that way—a new accessory and a really fun new thing to do.” clockwise from above: POSSO with their custom designed headphones—wearing spats, of course; they describe their current look as “futuristic bikerhooker;” the most amazing fruit-dangle charm ever. photos at bottom left: courtesy of posso. hair: raul preciado at sculpt salon using tigi. makeup: april love at sculpt salon using trucco by sebastian. http://myspace.com/possothespat
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