Lifestyle

Interview with Marioly Vazquez: The Pastel World of Maria Marie

In the magical place that is Notting Hill, we entered a very special world: a world of delicate and soft and tender colors and shapes, a world where moods are expressed and conveyed through colors.
Marioly Vazquez is the Mexican photographer behind this world: the world of Maria Marie. Her Instagram and personal blog are soft as a cloud, universes of pastel and beautiful pictures, soothing to the eye and refreshing to the mind. Let yourself be inspired by the art, the textures and the marvelous corners of the world captured by Maria’s camera during her many trips, but don’t be fooled by the delicate appearance of her blog:

the girl is rocking London.

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How did everything start with the blog?
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I don’t really have a professional background in photography. But I went to Paris for a year to learn French and I was living with a family, the father was a director of photography for films, and the mother was an editor. It woke something in me. So I started to see different movies, the father used to travel a lot and he showed us pictures of his travels, and I became fascinated.
Moving back to Mexico, I studied and I specialized in cultural tourism: I was interested in different cultures and traveling, and I started working at a museum. I started doing photography: at first, it was a hobby, and it was just for me, I wanted to take these interesting things about Paris. I never studied photography, but I was really into reading books, reading blogs, watching videos, anything that counted as practice. And I remember when a friend of mine told me, “oh, I just got the iPhone!” I love technology, and she told me, “download this app, this has really cool filters, it’s called Instagram, so you can put filters on your photos.” So I downloaded Instagram just because I was told the filters were really cool. Then they were very vintage, very saturated, and I was like, “Oh this is very cool!” so I started experimenting with them.

In the beginning, Instagram was a community that was really into the arts: it was not what it is now, which is mainly social, there were people who really loved photography, people that shared beauty and everyday moments, and I think that really motivated me. I used to have a full-time job in Mexico and I was doing this on the side: I was just taking my weekends to go out, to take pictures of my everyday life, of things I found that were pretty.

P A S T E L M O O D S

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Then you moved to London: how are you finding the city?

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I moved to London in 2015 to do a Master Degree in Art Management. It was very difficult at the beginning because it was not just about changing a city, but also changing in my photography: I found that the change was quite hard. In Mexico it’s very bright, the sun is always shining, it’s colorful everywhere, and I moved here around August, September, when it was already gloomy, the light was not the same, and everything was grey. But I thought it was a challenge for me to reinvent myself and my photography and try to find myself doing different photography.

But I find this line that still follows me, and I’m pretty sure that, if I’d move elsewhere, the style would continue being the same. I would just have to adapt to the city or to the different environment, or whatever.

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Your IG and your blog are very pastel: what is your favorite pastel color?
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I love them all!
I love all the colors, I don’t know. It would really depend on my mood. When you see my Instagram or my blog, you might think that I’m always wearing pastel colors, but I’m not. I’m a person that always wears black, white, beige, and sometimes add a little bit of color. But I don’t know, it’s like I dress in black, but colors are inside of me. In my mind, in my ideas. So there are no specific colors that I have in mind.
Obviously, I love pink, because it’s trendy and it really reflects a more feminine side of my work. I think it really works well in the way I want to portray my photography.

“But colors are inside of me. In my mind, in my ideas.”

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Let’s talk about your book: Pastel Moods! How did the idea for the book come up?
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I wanted to do something in collaboration with my publisher, so when he approached me he said, “I really like your aesthetic, I really like your images. Let’s try to create something with a concept so it can be a book.”

He asked me,
“What is your main objective with photography? Why do you do it?”

And I told him, “Well, I started back in Mexico in 2008, and it was quite dangerous in my city. We’ve got a lot of Narcos and everything, so the way they portray Mexico in the news is very harsh, very dramatic. It was horrible: you read the news and everything about Mexico is death, murder, and bad things. I want to counterbalance that. That’s why I started to do pastel images: to show that Mexico is not just the bad things that people read, but there’s much more than that. And I wanted to portray nice things, I wanted people to feel the nice part of life almost like visual meditation.”

And that’s what I told him, and he said, “You’re trying to portray moods: positive emotions with your photography.” That’s how “Pastel Moods” came to life. This book is divided into 8 chapters, each chapter explores one color through my photography. There’s just an introduction on how these colors make us feel in different ways, or that we can even use this color to express ourselves.

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Out of these 8 chapters, which one is your favorite?
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I love them all! I don’t know, I think the pink one is very nice because it’s variated. It shows different topics: not just lifestyle but flowers, travels, and people. So I think it’s the most complete chapter that kind of shows different kinds of photography: that’s why I probably like it best.

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What’s the book on your night table?
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Right now I keep re-reading a book from an author that I really love which is called “Light Is The New Black” (by Rebecca Campbell). She’s Australian but she’s living here, and her book is about meditation and connecting to light and connecting to the Source. I read that before going to sleep: that’s just little chapters, so I take a chapter just opening the page and that would be my night meditation.

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You talked about the Frida and V&A Bloom exposition. What’s a female artist that inspires you?
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I think Frida is such an interesting concept. She’s more than just an artist, she’s really a concept. I think right now she became a pop icon, but she is much more than that. I think she’s very inspiring. She was true to herself and to her identity in the way she used to dress. She was very proud of her story and of her life. I think that it’s very powerful to see women who manage to never lose themselves, though they are suffering and are going through so much pain: “Try to transform the pain into something inspiring.”

She looked away and never lost herself, and I think that’s very important for women in the art. There are so many things that we feel like we need to be in control, life family or marriage.

“Try to transform the pain into something inspiring.”

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You love colors, what about makeup?
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I love makeup. I like my beauty routine which, right now, is very simple. When I wake up I wash my face, I’ll put some moisturizer and then the concealer: I use and love Mac products. Just the base, some blush, a black eyeliner, and the mascara. I paint my eyebrows and then the lips, but I try to keep it very simple: only if I’m going out or in the evening I will try to put on a little bit more eyeshadow, doing something more dramatic.

It’s very simple and very neutral.

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And what about skincare?
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In the evening I remove all of my makeup, then I use oil – it depends, I use an exfoliator, the Clinique one, every two weeks. I love it. And I also have the Clarisonic, and I love the foam. Then I put some micellar water. I recently went to Japan and my plain stopped in Korea: so at the airport I started buying Korean skincare. And there were these sheet masks, so I bought all kinds of them: of course also the ones for the under-eye, for the lips, and they have a lot of pink masks for clogged pores as well so I bought a bottle of that. I try to be consistent, but sometimes you just get home and you’re so exhausted.
You have to be very disciplined, there’s much pressure: I have too many appointments, I have to keep on my beauty routine and I need to wake up, I need to exercise, I need to do work, I need to do this and that…it’s exhausting. So you’re like, “you know what? I’m going to show myself compassion and let’s go to sleep. Don’t worry about this. Exercise? Not today. Reading? Not today. Let’s just sleep.”

“You know what? I’m going to show myself compassion and let’s go to sleep. Don’t worry about this. Exercise? Not today. Reading? Not today. Let’s just sleep.”

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#PINK

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#PASTEL

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#EMOTION

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And what about the last movie you watched?
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It was “Book Club” at the cinema. It’s about four women that have a book club, and they start again reading “50 Shades of Grey.” It’s all about them who, in their older years, read that book again.

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You also talk about travel in your blog, you’ve recently been to India. What’s your favorite country so far to show on Instagram?
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I don’t know. I fell in love with Japan and India but India is just full of contrasts. You can see the big palaces and the Maharaja and everything is so exotic but there are very poor areas and people very undermined.
People stare at my pictures and say, “oh your trip looks gorgeous” and I’m, “yes because I’m only showing one side of India.” But I think that India is more complex than that. However, in terms of colors and architecture and beauty, I think that India is the most beautiful country in the world. Just the patterns, the colors, the textures, the textiles, the craft…and I think people should really experience that.

Because going to India is not for pleasure. It’s not like “I’m going to go and relax:” it’s not relaxing at all, you’ve to be up for the ride and just expect the unexpected and, once you’re in the palace or when you see the Taj Mahal, you’ll see that everything was worth it. But just traveling, moving between the cities, trying to find a restaurant that is safe for you to eat, to manage people who don’t understand your English, is not easy. I think that this contrast is hard but, when you get it, it’s even more worth it because you put a lot of effort in being there and, once you are, you see the beauty of India.

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One country you’d like to visit next?
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I would love to travel to South France. I would also love to go to Italy, my dream is to take a month off, rent a car and just drive around and go to the South of Italy. Exploring a little bit, tasting the food, talking to people. But I’ll need someone to drive because I will drink wine.

I would really love to see a field of sunflower and picture it.

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Which are your favorite Instagram spots in London?
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Obviously, Notting Hill is really nice because you can find very nice houses around here. I live in North London, in Islington, and I’ve been exploring, and I’ve found some really good spots, like really nice houses and gardens with a lot of flowers. And Chelsea is a very nice spot if you want to take pictures. There’s another place, near Angel Station, where they have a really beautiful and colorful wall. It’s my secret spot where I love to take pictures for a session.

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And what’s your secret for a very successful Instagram?
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I think the thing is to be very consistent in your style, it’s very important for you to identify yourself as a photographer, artist, illustrator or whatever you do. If you have your own style, and you keep it very close to you, obviously not in a boring way since you can still evolve, people can see consistency in your Instagram, in your work, and they will know your aesthetic or what you represent.

They’ll become engaged because they’re following you and they like what they see all over.

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What’s your next project?
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I have one, but it’s a secret! Right now I’m promoting my book, and I’m going to travel to Mexico to promote the book there, and for a launching party, they’re going to do there. And after that, I’m going to travel to Argentina to give a course there, and I’m also working on an exhibition here in London.

Now, Some Fun Questions…

One song that describes London for you:

I will have to say the group “Beach House.”
I think that it is, for me, is very representative of London or, at least, for my time in London. When I just moved here, there were a lot of things of self-discovery of myself and about trying to break with different conventionalisms that I used to have.

One photograph that you took and that really represents London for you:

This photo represents my favorite London. The colorful doors…it doesn’t matter if you’re in North or South London, everywhere you go there’s a colorful and beautiful door.

One pastel color that represents London:

I think I would say blue because I think London is a very masculine city. I feel the energy here is not as feminine as Paris. More of a blue-kind of energy around here.

What about the color of your hometown: