Mardi Gras Moments: The Little Shop of Fantasy
Last month, IT Editor Janelle Nanos traveled to New Orleans to explore the culture and traditions of Mardi Gras. For four days, she spoke with the people behind the masks — the ones who help make the celebration happen — to get their stories and insider tips. She’ll be blogging about her experiences through February 24th, when the party culminates. Check back for more Mardi Gras Moments.
It’s hard not to feel like you’re being watched when you enter the home and workshop of sisters Laura and Ann Guccione. Push open the two wooden doors to their 1830s-era Creole cottage, and you’ll find yourself in a room covered floor-to-ceiling in gorgeous, intricate, dazzingly delicate masks, depicting the likes of Marie Antoinette, jesters, cats, clowns, and other facades made from leather, wire, feathers, papier-mâché and even silverware. And they’re watching your every move.
The two sisters got started in mask-making when their mother, a nurse, cared for a local merchant Mark Stark, who was renowned in the French Quarter for his feathered masks. They began working with him in his shop, The Little Shop of Fantasy, while he recovered, and eventually they came to help run the store, taking it over in 1998 when he died. Growing up in the city, they had always wanted to have a shop in the Quarter, but after Katrina, their overhead costs grew too steep, so now the two sisters make and sell their masks, alongside a collection of amazing masks from over 35 artists, out of their home. The mask-making community is a small one, and the sisters believe they are the only remaining mask-makers who still live in the city.
“The costume starts with the mask,” Ann explains of the Mardi Gras tradition, which stems from the belief that in the final hours before the Lenten season begins, the mask allows for you to become more uninhibited and fully enjoy the last moments of fun. She says that people will often email them with their costume ideas and make requests for orders months before the celebration begins. Prices range from $35-$200 for a mask, with the average being about $80. You can visit their shop by appointment, where you can see the confluence of glitter and feathers and industrial glue guns and bizarre face-shaped molds they use for their creations. When I visited them in January, they had about 50 masks to make by Mardi Gras. “We’re pretty much covered in glitter” throughout the season, said Laura.
For many partygoers, the mask can be your ticket to a insider Mardi Gras experience, as many events will allow you access if you have a great mask and costume. But even if you don’t get into a ball or gala, you can celebrate with some of the best costumed folks around at the Society of St. Anne parade, which kicks off in the Bywater neighborhood only a few blocks from their shop. The parade originally began as a event for maskmakers and artisans who created the costumes for Mardi Gras, and today it’s one of the best places to go to see the more outrageous outfits. Ann and Laura walked me over to the ground zero of where the event kicks off, the backyard of Marcus Fraiser.
Fraiser is the owner of the antique store Le Garage, and he was home that afternoon because the shop had unfortunately been mistaken for a real garage – as a car had driven into it. So he planned to spend the next few days cleaning up and tending to his garden while they repaired his shop. This cleaning was probably for the best. When we walked through, it was riddled with objects that had overflown from his shop, from the legs of a mannequin to a huge marble bathtub tucked under a hammock. Over 3,000 people show up for this party on Mardi Gras morning, which overflows onto Crouet Street. But Fraiser hardly seems to mind.
Want more Mardi Gras Moments? Check out the archive here. And now, you can find where the locals go on Fat Tuesday with our interactive Mardi Gras map.
Photos: Janelle Nanos
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