After Hours — Mara Solca

Black and white portrait of Mara Solca in a coat
From Mara Solca. To You. Subject After Hours.

It is nearly two in the morning and the room has acquired the peculiar stillness of a party that should have ended an hour ago. Mara Solca is looking for her other shoe. Noor Hassan has found three, none of them a pair. A jacket hangs from a lamp, the television is playing to itself, and someone has left the window open despite the cold. Mara changes her mind about the dress, then the coat, then the shoes again. She has somewhere to be in the morning but refuses to talk about it. A phone lights up on the table. Neither of them looks. Noor picks up the silver heels and asks whether they are really going out. “I thought we were already out,” Mara says. Outside, the first delivery vans are moving down the street.

After hours / 01

Mara
Solca
In
Transit

Mara Solca is late, although there is nowhere particular she needs to be. Her shoes are on the floor, her coat is half-buttoned and someone has left the television on in the next room. She talks about clothes the way other people talk about weather: something you notice, something you endure, something that can unexpectedly change the entire day. Tonight, she has dressed without deciding where she is going. A silk dress under a borrowed jacket. Jewellery she forgot she owned. Mascara from this morning. “I like things better when they’re slightly wrong,” she says. Outside, the street is almost empty. Inside, nothing feels finished yet.

A Conversation withNoor HassanAfter Hours

Close portrait of Mara Solca wearing a dark jacket
Portrait of Mara Solca against a white background
Second portrait of Mara Solca

What are you still doing here after everyone has left?

Mara has been ready to leave for almost an hour. At least that's what she keeps saying. Her coat is on, but the shoes are off again. Noor watches her disappear into the next room, only to return wearing something entirely different. Nobody comments.

The jacket is borrowed. Nobody can remember from whom.

It appeared sometime after midnight, hanging over the back of a chair. The sleeves are too long and the shoulders sit awkwardly. Mara puts it on anyway. “It looks better like that,” Noor says. Neither of them can explain exactly what that means.

One pair of shoes, five different versions of the night.

Silver, pointed and impossible to walk in for very long. Mara insists they are comfortable, then immediately sits down. There is a photograph of her wearing them earlier that evening, although she doesn't remember it being taken. She asks to see it again.

Nobody agrees about the dress. She wears it anyway.

The colour is wrong, according to Noor. The length is wrong, according to somebody else. Mara doesn't seem particularly interested in either opinion. She adjusts one strap, looks at herself in the window and decides there is nothing left to discuss.

At two in the morning, nobody is watching the clock.

The music has stopped and the room is beginning to look like morning. Someone opens a window. Mara is still wearing the silver shoes, although nobody remembers when she put them back on. “One more photograph,” she says. Noor reaches for the camera.

Cropped face and silver mouthpiece
Mara Solca in a yellow floral dress
Silver heels editorial photograph
Full-length yellow floral look
Close portrait cutout
Mara Solca in a yellow floral dress
Detail of silver heels

After hours / 03

Noor
Hassan
&
Mara
Solca

here is something slightly unreal about getting dressed after midnight. The day has already happened, nobody is waiting for you, and the usual rules seem less convincing. Things that felt important at six in the evening have somehow disappeared by twelve. Mara Solca is standing in front of the mirror trying on the same jacket for the third time. It is too large through the shoulders, almost covers her hands and slips backwards whenever she moves. She decides this is exactly why she likes it. Noor thinks it would look better buttoned. Mara disagrees without looking at her. On the floor are two pairs of shoes, a silk dress, one earring, several photographs from earlier in the evening and a glass of water she has forgotten about. Someone has left music playing quietly from a phone on the windowsill.