#MyVogueScandinavia: See avatars Lili and Masculinius model the latest spring/summer 2022 looks

We often have our eyes out for muses living in cyberspace. After all, Vogue Scandinavia’s own avatar, AADA, needs some fashionable friends. Now she’s found them, in two new avatars created by up-and-coming digital designer Mads Samuel Bjerre Henriksen.

The 31-year-old Danish designer started his career in the early aughts, creating 2D graphics and working with software such as Photoshop to play around with existing imagery. Back then, he would mash various images together to recreate the imagery that lived in his head. But two years ago, he was forced to rethink his way of working when he lost his job due to the pandemic.

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It was then that Bjerre Henriksen realised he could use computer software to create art, like a painter would create a piece of artwork using paint and a canvas. From this epiphany, his avatars were born.

Instead of working with just one avatar, Bjerre Henriksen makes many, seeing himself in all of his creations, both male and female. While the avatars themselves exude heightened female and male characteristics, when it comes to their clothing, he blurs the line between gender expectations. “I really like the whole kind of androgynous style, masculine versus feminine,” Bjerre Henriksen explains. “I prefer when I do the female characters to have them in pants rather than dresses. I like kind of mixing it up, mixing the genders in a way. I think it makes them more interesting.”

While some of Bjerre Henriksen’s avatars are rooted in reality, featuring human characteristics, others appear more alien – beings from another planet or dimension. What’s more, they all exhibit their own personal style. “I usually don’t name them, only when I use an avatar for more projects,” he says.

Exclusively for these pages, Bjerre Henriksen dresses two avatars in looks straight from the runway. A muscular male avatar, Masculinius, wears a full look from David Koma’s SS22 runway, while Lili, a delicate female, wears Paco Rabanne spring/summer 2022. Together, they illustrate Bjerre Henriksen’s inherent duality. Both avatars were styled by Vogue Scandinavia fashion assistant Amelie Langenskiöld.

While the designer sees parts of himself in his work, he encourages the viewer to project their own fantasies onto the characters. “I don’t want to put my story onto anyone else,” he says. “I want people to work something out themselves and create their own stories from what I create.” He often finds himself working at night, when “creativity hits.” He admits that he definitely doesn’t have “a healthy sleep pattern.”

The artist aspires to one day work with his avatars full-time, creating commissions for advertisements, album covers or whatever else comes his way. In the meantime, he finds inspiration in other artists’ work. “It’s the recipe that art makes artists that makes art, by which I mean there’s no artist that’s not inspired by another artist,” he explains. “We all kind of inspire each other in different ways. So steal everything you possibly can, just make it your own. Not steal and copy but steal and adapt .” It’s a utopian vision, from a future-thinking artist, one whose work will undoubtedly continue to inspire others.

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