☆ Marnie Scarlet ☆
Could Marnie possibly be a reincarnation of the legendary Lucille Ball? It’s not only the luminous complexion and the huge limpid blue eyes that give it away, it’s also the incandescent love for life, the positivity and the big heart.
Just like Lucille, she’s a real trooper, certainly one of the hardest-working creatures on the club and cabaret scenes.
Ms Scarlet left her Dutch village, fittingly named Monster, to settle in London back in 1996. After training as a pattern-cutter and designer at Demask, a latex-wear company, and later at Skin II, she soon appeared on the catwalks and stages as a model and a performer. She now designs for Libidex, again a latex/fetish company.
Thanks to teaching herself all about make-up, she’s now a real pro at painting her face, a ritual she does daily. She even shops at Tesco wearing it.
As for the inspiration behind her gob-smacking drag, cabaret and burlesque looks, it simply comes from pop art (Warhol), dada (Duchamp), with an idiosyncratic twist of surrealism-cum-absurdism.
“My performances, which I work around the outfits I design, are quite in your face, but I never set out to shock,” she assures me, perhaps overlooking the hypodermic needles planted on her head that are often part of her act. “For me it’s really more about self-decorating and story-telling.”
I would advise anyone who’s unfamiliar with Marnie’s stage antics to take a peek at the clips on her website.
Constant bookings from all over London, Europe, Australia, North America, even Israel, ensure that her feet hardly touch the ground.
And that’s never a problem for someone so brimming with talent and energy.

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