Finding a distinct creative voice is a challenge for any artist. For young artists, it may be even more daunting—especially when you and your identical twin both make art, and the outside world might expect you to be exactly alike, simply because you are twins. But as costumers, designers, and cosplayers, Montclair locals Lizzie and Arrow Nahra take this challenge in stride, developing their own imaginative visions while working alongside one another.
I first met the Nahra twins on a crisp Sunday afternoon in mid-October at Bass Arts Studio’s fashion classroom on Park Street in Montclair. The Young Designers class was just coming to a close, with only Jessie Gagliano, the Bass Arts Studio fashion instructor, and three students remaining. The Nahra twins, 13, were camped out in the back of the room at parallel sewing machines putting finishing touches on their work for the day—their respective parts of a joint Alice in Wonderland Halloween costume that the five members of the class had chosen together as their self-directed project for the fall. Lizzie Nahra, who was wearing the lacy wrist cuffs she had made for her Mad Hatter costume, pulled her twin Arrow- who uses they/them pronouns- from their own work on their Cheshire Cat costume to ask for an opinion on the trim of a miniature top hat. In addition to their own costumes, the twins—who are both eighth graders at Glenfield Middle School—were also working on several Halloween costumes for friends outside of class who don’t know how to sew.
For the twins, creativity came naturally. “Art has always been a massive part of my life for as long as I can remember,” Lizzie tells me on the phone. “I’ve basically been into fashion my entire life,” says Arrow later, recalling a moment where, at age 3, they attempted to use a sewing machine before being stopped by their mother. The twins began hand-sewing at 8 years old, initially taking classes at another local sewing studio. “The classes [there] were super structured, and it just wasn’t for me” Lizzie says. “Everyone had to do the same project, and I didn’t like that, so we found Bass Arts Studio, and I’ve been going there ever since,” says Arrow.
The twins began taking fashion classes at Bass Arts Studio when they turned 10. “The thing that makes Bass Arts Studio’s class so different is that it’s not a sewing class, it’s a fashion design class,” says Gagliano, a 2008 Fashion Design graduate of Pratt Institute. Gagliano worked in TV and film art departments for 10 years before joining Bass Arts Studio as the fashion instructor in 2018. “Kids are not going to come in and make 12 identical pairs of pajama pants,” she says. “They all come in with their own vision.” Bass Arts Studio founder and master teacher, Montclair artist Fern Bass, says this is a part of the school’s overall philosophy “At Bass Arts, we help kids begin to find their voice by allowing them creative freedom and balancing that with providing a supportive structure with a heavy emphasis on skill-building. It is so important to have the student’s creative vision lead, no matter what age. They way we do this is by asking questions, listening, mirroring and providing validation for a child’s ideas.”
While the Nahra twins share a love of art and fashion, their vision and inspiration as designers is anything but identical. “Some people expect twins to be the same person, so I kind of try to prove that wrong,” says Arrow. “If [Lizzie]’s doing one thing, then I try to do the opposite.” When I visited them at the studio, they showed me photos of themselves donning the final projects they’d made in a previous Bass Arts Fashion course—Arrow wearing a hooded black and red floor-length coat and Lizzie in a full-length wedding dress she constructed. Lizzie particularly enjoys making gowns as well as using flowy and drapey fabrics and bold colors. She says her work is inspired by classical painting, animals, and historical fashion, specifically the 17th century. “I love doing garments inspired by nature, because I love the outdoors—except for bugs.”
On the other hand, Arrow is partial to making jackets and finds inspiration in emo and punk rock music and style, bands like Black Veil Brides and My Chemical Romance, and drag queens like Sharon Needles. “I definitely like working with darker colors, not necessarily spooky—well, it’s sometimes spooky,” Arrow says with a laugh.
Gagliano affirms this difference in the twins’ design sensibility. “Lizzie has a more dreamy, whimsical Victorian style, and Arrow’s work tends to be darker, more comic book and graphic-novel driven, with a sci-fi edge.”
Additionally, both twins enjoy cosplaying, creating their own versions of the costumes of characters from popular media to wear to conventions and for photoshoots. But the costume and character choices they make are quite different as well, and in some ways mirror the aesthetics they gravitate to in their own original designs. Arrow enjoys cosplaying villians from anime, such as the white and red spiderweb kimono they made to cosplay the character Rui from the anime Demon Slayer, or the many buttoned jacket they created for the outfit of the character Tsumugi Shirogane from the anime franchise Danganronpa. Lizzie has recently made costumes like Eliza Schulyer’s Colonial-style gown from the musical Hamilton, and the purple-draped, Grecian-style dress worn by the character Megara in Disney’s animated feature Hercules.
Despite their stylistic differences, the twins both love a challenge, and each described being drawn to creating elaborate garments in both their cosplay and original designs. “I like making intricate costumes, and so does my sister. That’s kind of a big part of what I do now,” says Arrow. Lizzie concurs. “I make a lot of costumes that are extremely complex and detailed, because I find doing all of the little details very therapeutic and fun,” she says. Bass says “Lizzie and Arrow are always on fire with ideas and love the challenge of trying to figure out how to execute them. It’s a beautiful thing to see their excitement and enthusiasm.”
Even more than learning the skills to make increasingly elaborate work, the twins emphasized their creative growth in the time they’ve been taking classes at Bass Arts. “We’re really allowed to make whatever inspires us, so I feel my creativity has really taken off. My eyes were opened and I was able to see so many more possibilities, like ‘Oh, I can make that!” Lizzie says. Arrow speaks about honing their vision in their work and gaining confidence through class. “I’ve learned to embrace the darker side and to give myself more creative freedom, and not worry about ‘Oh, I can’t wear this out in public, people will look at me like I’m wearing a costume’—which they probably will do, because I am wearing a costume!”
“I think they’ve just become more of themselves,” says Gagliano when I ask her how the twins have grown in the time since she’s taught them. “They’ve just sort of pinpointed what they are into. They used to do things that were more similar to each other, and it feels like now they’re doing more individual stuff.”
But I wondered, though they have branched out into exploring their own unique styles, if being twins and taking class together has influenced their work in any way. “Being a twin has been a massive part of my life,” Lizzie says, “and I couldn’t imagine what not having a twin would be like.” Arrow has a somewhat different take. “We’re both a little competitive, so that kind of leads us to do our best work… . Lizzie gives me good tips, because she knows how to do things I don’t know how to do, so it’s kind of a win-win.” Lizzie agrees, saying, “In class, Arrow is kind of like my partner in crime.”
Helping each other out in the fashion studio, however, is not exclusive to the Nahra twins, but rather, as Lizzie says, “the culture of the class.” “Everyone is giving constructive criticism. It’s a really supportive environment as a whole. It has been inspiring to work with other designers who like art as much as I do. Also, Jessie has been a really big inspiration to me, because she will help me with whatever project I decide to pursue.”
“I just help them make a way to get to the final product they had in their mind,” Gagliano says. “It’s really empowering to help kids make something they dreamed up.”
By Charlotte O’Dair Gadler