Mirror, Mirror: Mount Airy artist's bold clothes for 'the fearless'

Graphic artist Iris Barbee Bonner wasn't sure celebrity models Amber Rose and Blac Chyna would actually wear to the MTV Video Music Awards the skintight ensembles on which she had painted the shame-inducing words slut, golddigger, whore.

One never knows what the rich and famous might do.

But when Bonner's phone started buzzing while she watched Kevin Hart's performance Sunday night at the Linc, she got the distinct feeling her risque brand of clothing, Thesepinklips, had been recognized on the award show's raunchy red carpet.

"I finally had to get up in the middle of the show, go to the bathroom, and check my phone," said Bonner, 30, who lives in Mount Airy, where she paints in her studio/bedroom. "It was almost like a dream."

Not only did Bonner paint the words on Rose and Chyna's controversial VMA getups, but she also did so for the outfits of Rose's assistants - Benji Carlisle and Joseph Isaiah - all black tops, bottoms, boots, and hat with a homophobic slur repeated throughout. (The jumpsuit and the dress with a plunging neckline that Rose and Chyna wore were fashioned by Philadelphia clothing designer Brittany DeShields.)

The idea behind the painted messages, Bonner said, was to shock. Rose, a South Philadelphia native who is often bullied in social media by industry peers, asked Bonner to paint the derogatory words in such a way that she and Chyna (and Isaiah and Carlisle, who asked for different versions) could own them and bring attention to prejudice - hence, Bonner's bold, bubblegum-hued graffiti design.

Within minutes, online fashion magazines from Elle to Nylon tweeted posts praising the celebs for wearing their feminism on their sleeves.

Yet, even with all the support, Thesepinklips' first foray into celebrity land could not escape criticism.

Blogs from Hollywood Life to Fashion & Style placed Rose and Chyna on the evening's worst-dressed list, squarely next to Kim Kardashian's trashy, baggy Balmain gown; model Gigi Hadid's awful canary-yellow, high-low mess; and everything Miley Cyrus wore as host of the awards.

Then, on Monday night's episode of Fashion Police, critic Brad Goreski referred to Thesepinklips' red-carpet looks as a "DIY project for Pinterest."

Ouch!

"Bad press is better than no press," Bonner told me in a phone interview Monday morning. "So many people have told me they wouldn't be caught dead in my clothes. It used to hurt my little feelings. Now I'm like, whatever. What I make isn't for everybody."

Thesepinklips pieces have a pop-art quality that's very Andy Warhol-meets-Moschino and that appeals to this season's 1970s-driven market. It's a curated collection of T-shirts, crossbody bags, pumps, and baseball hats awash with provocative messages addressing sex and violence.

For examples, one of the collection's top sellers is a T-shirt promoting sex over war. (For more unprintable-in-this-newspaper designs, go to her website, www.thesepinklips.com.)

"My clothes are for the fearless," Bonner said.

Of whom there are apparently many.

Five years in the fashion world, Bonner sells 50 to a few hundred items a week that retail for $10 for a pillow to $500 for a pair of boots (enough for her to quit her job as an art teacher three years ago). And she has more than 33,000 Instagram followers.

Thesepinklips thigh-high boots have gotten shout-outs on Fashion Bomb Daily's blog. Several pieces of the collection are sold at the Patricia Field boutique in downtown Manhattan.

"I've been working on this for a while," said Bonner, whose artwork once was prominently displayed throughout the Dreaming Building, an experimental work space in Northern Liberties. "This is my life. It is what I do."

The kind of activism Bonner displays - taking the very criticism lobbed at people and displaying it proudly - is in no way new. But it's a tactic adopted more and more by women (and some men) to fight gender inequality.

In 2011, Slut Walks began after a Toronto police officer suggested women "avoid dressing like sluts" as a precaution against sexual assault (the Amber Rose Slut Walk will be held in October in L.A.). In May, as part of the Black Lives Matters movement, topless black women walked the streets of San Francisco to draw attention to black women, often overlooked but also dying at the hands of police.

And remember the nude Aunt Jemima sphynx carved out of sugar that lived in the former Domino Sugar Factory in Brooklyn for a year? The piece, called A Subtlety, by artist Kara Walker, was a not-so-subtle statement of America's layered history of black women's bodies, both despised and sexualized.

"My paintings," Bonner said, "are really about helping women find the strong voice inside of them. This is how I express myself."

Bonner's inside voice wasn't always so big.

She grew up in the Northwest section of the city sketching images of nude women. In 2007, she earned a fine arts degree with a concentration in graphic design from Arcadia University. All the while, she painted designs on her own clothes.

"I held myself back a lot," Bonner said. "But I would paint on anything I could - clothes, shoes, a purse - anything and everything was a canvas."

Ten years ago, a childhood friend introduced Bonner to Carlisle, who later became Rose's assistant. The two kept in touch on Instagram. In March, Carlisle reached out to Bonner, asking her to design Rose's outfits for the BET Awards.

"I was all psyched about that," Bonner said. "But then they canceled and said they wanted my stuff for the VMAs."

Bonner worked round the clock for three days to turn the outfits around in time. She texted pictures to Carlisle as she worked.

"This was such a big opportunity. I had to just go for it."

Boy, did she.

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