Playtime shows are not only a space to do business, but also for feeding the artistic soul in all of us by creating an environment full of inspiration and beauty. At Playtime Paris in January, we were joined by several incredible artists who brought our Wonderland to life through their work. To better understand their amazing pieces, we had a conversation with Lena Voutta and Thoas Lindner, the artists behind The Other Gods! Art is such a great way for brands to find inspiration for their collections and for buyers to find ideas for their store and the items they want in their selection.

Join us as we get to know this creative duo!

Playtime: Please introduce yourselves.

Thoas: We are Lena and Thoas, and we are presenting The Other Gods here at Playtime Paris.

Playtime: Can you talk about your work and what inspires you?

Thoas: I think a lot of our inspiration comes from fabric and colors, but we also inspire each other. One of us starts with an idea that the other builds an additive idea off of, and our little wonderland just keeps growing from there.
Lena: And then we use the pompoms and work with the fabrics to create some fantasy creatures that just evolve.
Thoas: Often it's a combination of us. Lena does a lot with wool, while I'm more into sewing and fabrics, so our work comes from us combining these two elements. For this pompom series, I often did the masks while Lena did the pompoms and knitted parts, and then it comes together.

Playtime: What brand do you have a crush on at Playtime Paris?

Thoas: I discovered this brand Gnomo Magic Factory, which I like a lot because it's really fantasy costumes for kids. It has nice colors, nice fabrics, and beautiful ideas.

Playtime: Our theme this season is Wonderland. Can you please describe what your Wonderland would look like?

Thoas: With our work, we are trying to create very fantasy, fairytale-like creatures and then combining them with backdrops and curtains so that it all comes together to form a world. By then adding and styling costumes to go along with the masks, we are building our Wonderland.
Lena: There are different types of masks too, we also do tufting as you can see with this big mask, so they are a bit more complicated. It is tufted partially with a machine, but I always go back to the hand tufting and hand knotting as well. So it's like whatever comes into our minds, we just add and all this forms our Wonderland. The parts with longer threads like this and on the big curtain in the trend space you can only achieve by hand. I love working by hand even though it takes a lot more time and effort to work with all the compounds, but I think it's very fun and gives a nice personal touch too.

Thoas: And we also use wooden parts that we pick up in the forest and paint them to combine with the masks and add a very organic structure to them. Our Wonderland is certainly full of color, color, and color!
Lena: Yes, always lots of color!

Thank you so much to Lena and Thoas for taking the time to speak with us!
We hope this lovely interview brought you inspiration and we can't wait to see what artists join us at the next edition of Playtime Paris July 9-10, 2022!

Want to meet the rest of the artists from Wonderland? Check out this article in the Playtime Magazine that introduces you to all of them!

And keep an eye out for more artist interviews coming soon!