Elle Banes Explores Poetry Through Fashion And Visual Art In Parallel To You
Images by Elle Banes
Fashion has long served as a language for personal expression, but for New York-based poet, model and multidisciplinary artist Elle Banes, the conversation extends beyond what the body wears. Through poetry, photography and handmade garments, Banes explores the relationship between identity and self-discovery in Parallel To You: Words and Images, a 235-page hardcover collection that transforms personal experiences into a multidisciplinary art project.
Spanning 15 years of writing, the book brings together poetry and prose drawn from personal notebooks, digital archives and handwritten thoughts. Accompanied by photographs of garments Banes designed, sewed and inscribed with her own poetry, the collection examines sexuality, vulnerability, desire, transformation and the complexities of growing into oneself. Some of the garments feature words carved into fading wax-coated fabric, while others conceal poetry beneath layers of material, allowing language to become something experienced through touch and movement.
For Banes, whose creative practice encompasses modeling, fashion and visual art, writing has always been a fundamental part of her identity. Reflecting on the origins of her relationship with poetry, she recalls discovering its ability to communicate emotions that were otherwise difficult to articulate.
“Ever since third grade, I love writing. I love poetry, and I always wanted love and attention and romance. I read Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, and I was like, ‘Wow, I wanna be a tortured poet. Oh my gosh.’ And I just always loved poetry. I thought it was the most beautifully raw thing anyone could create,” Banes says.
That affinity for language eventually became a way to navigate her own relationships and experiences. “I've always been extremely shy, shy on camera, shy talking to people. When I would, like, date someone, I'm like, ‘I don't know what to say. Let me write a 10-page essay poem thing and give it to you and run away 'cause I don't know what to say. I don't know how to talk to people.’ And I just love writing 'cause it's, for me, just being able to use my words and be able to just see everything clearly.”
Her background in English Literature and Creative Writing, with a minor in Philosophy from Hunter College, further informs the collection's literary foundation. Yet Parallel To You is equally concerned with the visual possibilities of storytelling. Having started modeling in high school, Banes approaches the body as an artistic medium rather than simply a vehicle for fashion.
“For me, instead of just, like, standing still, I'm a model. My first shoot I did was actually a nude shoot, and I pretended to be a turtle, and I was just, like, using my body in different art forms. I see my body as art instead of it being, like, a hypersexual thing and just being, like, a regular model,” she explains. “I love angles. I've always been into optical illusions. So I'm just really deeply in love with geometry, optical illusion, shapes, imagery. I think that my poetry translates in all the different aspects of art that I use.”
The collection's visual direction reflects that philosophy. Photographed at her childhood home, the imagery connects Banes' present-day creative identity with the environments and experiences that helped shape it. The result is an intimate archive of personal evolution, where clothing, language and photography operate as interconnected forms of expression.
That intimacy extends to the imperfections deliberately preserved throughout the book. Rather than pursuing an overly polished presentation, Banes wanted the collection to retain the inconsistencies and personal details that make the work human. “I think that for most books right now, a lot of them use, you know, different technology to make the book perfect, and I really wanted this book to be flawed, so I kept my mistakes,” she says.
She continues, “I've always been obsessed with keeping everything perfect. ‘Oh, I need to edit this.’ No, I kept that stuff in, and the only word that's capital is God. And there are certain little Easter eggs in the book that are inspired by different works of literature that I love, like Paradise Lost by John Milton.”
Beyond its literary and visual dimensions, the self-publishing process also challenged Banes to reconsider what it means to build a creative practice. “When you're creating something, you have to—it's not just creating, you also have to think of it as a business,” she says. “I always tell people that when you're a creative, you need people around you who do not think like you, who think very differently from you. You need people who are very different than you. You don't need yes men. You need to read books. You need to meet different people who know more than you, who are more intellectual than you, so you can learn.”
Ultimately, Parallel To You is an invitation to look beyond the finished image and consider the experiences behind its creation. For Banes, that means embracing the contradictions, mistakes and personal discoveries that accompany becoming an adult. “This book is pretty much an ode to human flaw and, you know, figuring yourself, figuring out who you are as a person, evolving as a human being in this day and age, especially in this age of AI.”
It is also an ode to intimacy and the value of understanding an artist beyond the work itself. As Banes puts it, “You should get to know the person. You should get to know the artist, you know, the work that you're watching. Get to know the backstory of the artist that you're reading or the writer that you're reading or observing or anything. Take your time to really get to know people 'cause everything is a story in itself.”
Parallel To You: Words and Images is available through ParallelToYou.com and LAAMS, located at 74 Orchard Street on Manhattan's Lower East Side.
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New York-based multidisciplinary artist Elle Banes brings together 15 years of personal writing, handmade fashion and photography in Parallel To You: Words and Images, a self-published poetry collection examining identity, intimacy, imperfection and the creative process.