MAY 2 0 1 7 I BOROMAG.COM 39 late, and if she wants to add color, she dyes white chocolate. “It’s beyond fashion: it’s details, it’s fabric, it’s prints, and I try to convert everything to my little fashionistas,” she said. “It’s fun. And it’s something that I’m always challenged by.” Her journey with chocolate began four years ago when she began making confections like chocolate bars and truffles. Etstein has taken some classes at the Culinary Institute of Education, where she was able to gain some tools, but she is mostly self-taught. “I really love aesthetic food that’s also yummy,” said Etstein, who came to New York from Israel nine years ago and has been an Astoria resident for more than six years. “I discovered the world of chocolate art and fell in love with it.” She bought mannequin molds, “and then the ideas just kept coming,” she said. “When I was exposed to modeling chocolate and the mannequin, it was very simple for me to combine it into the chocolate fashionistas.” She created her first four or five fashionistas at a chocolate party in her home and put them on display. From there, the fashionistas have become more and more intricate. When coming up with a new fashionista, Etstein doesn’t have a design in mind; she makes the first layer of molding chocolate, and “then ideas keep coming,” she said. Making a new chocolate fashionista design takes about three to four hours. When she’s copying an old design, each fashionista takes about an hour or hour and a half. Etstein gives every fashionista design a name that matches what they look like. For example, fashionistas with Victorian designs will have Victorian names.
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