Story and Photos by Victoria Davila
Revolutionizing with Creativity
A steady beat breaks into the silence of the night; a young girl stands behind a borrowed mixer and turntables with a coy smile. Lasers light the room. The eighteen-year-old disc jockey is calm, but focused on the sounds. She spins records, mixing herself into the tech-house songs—juxtaposing soothing jazz sounds with splashes of banging funk in all the right places. The pounding beats of her soul sound off the high ceilings. Her eyes slowly scan the room, taking in the atmosphere, before flashing between the computer screen and the Technic turntables. The hour and a half set comes together much like the clothes that adorn her petite figure head-to-toe.
“I call it eclectic,” Harlequin Okikai Julian-Stewart says of her style in a soft-spoken subtle cross between an English accent and a Southern drawl. She describes herself perfectly before laughing and asking exactly what eclectic means.
It’s 3:30 a.m. on February. 21, 2010, just days before Harlequin turns nineteen. When she is finally done with her set, the birthday girl gets a huge hug from the next performer, Luke Mandala. But the hug is only a minute of salvation from the freezing conditions.
She is one in a line of DJs playing at Carnival Divine – an underground electronic dance music party just outside Veneta. Woods surround a small line of parked cars belonging to the dedicated dancers that made the trip. Everyone is trying to keep warm inside the massive warehouse.
Event information encouraged attendants to dress in their “warmies” and Harlequin thought she had prepared for the night. Of all her layers, only her small jacket and Ugg-reminiscent boots are store bought. The rest of her attire is of her own conception.
Bright yellow pants pull the outfit together, but it’s the tights and stretch pants layered underneath that warm her legs. The pants are cinched together at the bottoms with a seam that alludes to an eighteenth-century European style. Her top is a small tank pairing of bright yellow material surrounding a zebra-print stripe up the front and back to make the outfit “pop,” she says. Flowing from her ears are yellow and blue-feathered earrings.
“I was inspired by the whole underground rave scene,” says Harlequin. “But I wanted to create my own original style that was unique from the rest,” she adds.
She lives and breathes art and wants to “spread it like a virus,” says Harlequin. It’s what she does; she is an artist to the core. The Hard-core-laquin, as one of her nicknames articulates.
Cabin to Countryside to Coutoure
Harlequin has a flair for the fantastic and a family who helped form her talents. A United States born citizen, Harlequin grew up living between Kentucky and England with her parents, siblings, and grandparents. Her immediate family moved to Oregon in the summer of 2001 where she has been working on cultivating her creativity and spreading it to the local masses.
It was not in a hospital, but on the stairs of a log cabin in Kentucky that Harlequin was born. Her father and grandfather were in the process of building it at the time. A water birth in the bathtub was the original plan, but the plumbing wasn’t finished yet.
Life in Kentucky was what many of us would consider straight of out a storybook. Harlequin and her siblings would frequent the Ohio River to play with their dogs. Fond memories include running down their long hallway, gaining speed through an open bedroom door, and jumping from an open window out onto a pile of hay where they would sometimes find snakes.
“I swear I wasn’t a redneck,” defends Harlequin of her country roots. “I listened to Enya and danced around and was a ballerina.”
The self-proclaimed free spirit calls much of her time in England “sheltered” because she didn’t watch television and only really hung out with her siblings, but her alternative upbringing there was part of what enlightened her to different beliefs and ways of life.
It was in the fields where Harlequin felt the energy of the old soil and
history under her feet—the energy that she calls magical. Days were spent with her siblings, running around in the fields with sheep or telling each other ghost stories.
Growing up with her mother Alex Julian, a Pagan Wiccan, she and the close-knit family learned about the goddess and celebrated solstices and Wiccan holidays.
Harlequin describes herself as open minded because of her diverse background: “I believe in fairies. I think that reality wouldn’t be as exciting without that belief. Like people can choose to believe in whatever they want, that’s one of the most exciting things about living.”
Imagination and art have always been a big part of daily life. Drawing, graphic design, and tattoo art were her top interests before music and fashion.
“I just got really exciting about being able to take a white piece or nothingness and giving it depth and being able to express feeling through it,” she says with bright eyes.
Her father, Joel Stewart, got a job at a charter school in Cottage Grove and the family moved to Oregon in 2001. The overcast skies and sheer amount of rain were welcoming and familiar to a family used to England’s weather. Spoken like a worldly-woman of a foreign country, Harlequin says that out of all the states, she enjoys the progressiveness of Oregon.
The atypical school in Cottage Grove is where Harlequin got the opportunity to delve into the fashion world academically. In a school where students were able to learn whatever they chose, the adolescent artist elected to learn the science of drying fabrics, the history of clothing, and the math of material measurements.
Like most people, Harlequin had trouble finding garments that fit just right. So she did something about it.
Joel helped teach her how to sew using a simple pattern and step-by-step help making a sundress when Harlequin was a teen. She’s been experimenting with do-it-yourself clothing ever since “realiz[ing] the potential that could be reached.”
Handmade, Wearable Art
What makes Harlequin’s handiwork different from the everyday is the caring that goes into the clothing. She describes the lack of personality in mass-produced, brand name products as one reason she feels better wearing her own designs.
“I’ve been very relieved to see in Eugene, a very large community of people that are against brand-name clothing,” says Harlequin. “I believe the first step to sustainability is to keep it local.”
Making clothing has since been a big part of her life. The Redoux Parlour is like Harlequin’s second home she jokes. The store sells used, vintage, and locally-designed clothing and accessories. Harlequin not only works there but also has studio space in the back where she works on designs.
She isn’t starving, but money always plays a role in what the artist can accomplish next. Her funds are limited and she acknowledges that the market to buy her wares is also broke but says, “I will always find fabric to make into my next wearable art!”
A lack of money doesn’t stop Harlequin from making clothes or music. She doesn’t have her own turntables, mixer, or computer, but she has been spinning records since August 2008.
It was on the way back from Burning Man that year that Harlequin made the decision to be a DJ.
“You know anything can happen at Burning Man. Any bad, good, crazy, fun, outrageous, surreal, unbelievable, totally fantastic, absolutely worst nightmare could happen,” she says with a smile that hides memories of Burning Man miracles and mysteries.
Most people wouldn’t dream of attending the festivities with a parent, but that’s just what she did. Harlequin and Alex camped at the Eugene camp: Shwar-town.
The pair went to join the masses with the goal of being part of an evolution and revolution of thought. She explains her first year at what burners call “Black Rock City” in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada as “kind of like being consciously reborn in a sense.”
The support and opportunities that Alex and Joel gave their daughter shaped her path of expression through art. However, it was the suggestion from friends on the drive back to Eugene that pushed Harlequin to solidify her DJ status.
The idea wasn’t a new one. But it took others pointing out her natural rhythm to push her to take the next step. The following Tuesday the DJ-in-training touched her first record and became a vinyl addict. She practiced hours at a time daily over the next six months and couldn’t get enough of it.
“It makes me feel powerful,” she says of using technology to tell a story, express an emotion, and share her soul with others.
Parties like Psychedelic Conspiracy, Under Construction, Winter Formal, Fire, Masquerade, Turtle Power, and most recently Carnival Divine are filling Harlequin’s musical resume in progress, but she says, “I’m not in any rush to get famous quick or anything; I just want to play music that my soul connects with.”
At Burning Man 2009, which she attended with her mom on a school bus, Harlequin’s career took another unexpected turn. While looking for a stage to DJ, she made a connection with party promoter Rafael Reynolds. The San Francisco MuchThump Project event organizer took her demo CD and called for a California booking, Much Thanks—a Thanksgiving party, soon after. Her music is now spreading across the west coast.
With numerous connections and a still-developing style, Harlequin remains an independent artist. She is waiting for the right people to find her. “I was advised by many promoters that I have so much potential that I shouldn’t sign with a company or label straight off,” she explains.
Harlequin just wants to play music, make clothes, and get people excited about being themselves. Bored with brand-name clothes and overplayed pop songs that promote conformity, she says: “We as individuals create and shape the world around us, so why wouldn’t you want to discover who you really are and express that person (you) with joyous pride?”
Harlequin’s work will be featured on April 24 in the Carnival of Couture: Parade of the Custom Made.
