Local woman brings feral attitude to performance and jewelry
Ferndale/Berkley Mirror, MI
Rio Scafone wants women to unleash their feral sides.
The Royal Oak-based performer has designed her own line of Feral Apparel jewelry and items, but she’s selling more than products. She’s selling a philosophy.
Scafone comes from a performing family (her uncle is rockabilly pioneer Jack Scott) and splits her time between acting, modeling, designing and recording music.
She created Feral Apparel last year while in “The Smell of the Kill,” a three-woman play.
“The character I was playing went from doormat housewife to independent soul,” Scafone said. “The director told me the character was becoming feral, her feral qualities were coming out.”
Scafone’s creativity kicked into gear, and she designed choker necklaces embellished with Swarovski crystals to show off her feral, feline side.
Cast members wore the necklaces when greeting the audience.
“People saw them and would love them,” Scafone said. “It became an ongoing analogy on the set to become very feral. It became a symbol for how we would like to live our lives.”
She set up a Web site (feralgirl.com) to sell her designs and received orders from across the United States and Canada.
Stores in Los Angeles and Royal Oak now carry her designs, and her jewelry could appear on TV soon.
Ted Moreno, a producer and long-time friend of Scafone’s, offered her a role on “The Inner Circle,” a TV show he is working on that mixes vampires and politics. She mentioned her jewelry line and he liked the designs so much he asked her to make a custom choker for the show.
“Since it is a gothic TV show, I thought her jewelry would be perfect for some character on there,” Moreno said. “She came out with a great design.”
Although Scafone has made a living in metro Detroit, she said if the show takes off, she’ll spilt her time between California and Michigan.
Much of her work has been commercials, promoting everything from dentists to Michigan travel to lawyer Sam Bernstein.
Her other work varies from local independent films to modeling for nationwide billboards. She once appeared on two billboards in Times Square at the same time.
She’s also creating a local TV show to spotlight local artists and women in business, an idea that’s an outgrowth of her feral philosophy of women coming into their own.
“It’s a movement,” she said. “It’s a revolution.”
