East West Carnival Collection

The New Atelier Frost collection.

Sooooo, I've been putting my energies into this new collection. I know what I said about the dark romance, and all of that, but I think I'll be keeping that on the back burner for fall. Because as soon as I started formulating new designs and digging through materials, the raw silk grabbed me, and I just wanted to make something bright and multi-cultural, like the Himalayas by way of the Great Plains and some retro hippie culture. It's all those sitars, I'm telling you--they infiltrated my mind and totally determined the style of this new collection.

Tassels, shimmer, iridescence, bright shiny baubles--it's all here! And the best thing about it is that it feels like totally me. I don't feel influenced by someone else's accessory designs, or anything like that--I feel totally led by my imagination. And that is a great place to be. I feel like my color choices really make my products hang together too. I've always kind of worried that I like and make too many different styles of things for it to all work together in the shop, but I like to think that my customer is a fashion chameleon, a style shape-shifter, just like me. One day she's rockabilly tough-and-sweet, the next she's an earthy bohemian goddess, then she might be a darkly romantic steampunker, a shoe-gazing rocker in an ironic t-shirt, an ethereal nymph in gauze and flowers. Limitlessness!

So for now it's East West Carnival, Savage Romance is in the works for fall, and who knows what after that? I'm just having too much fun with my head full of ideas and designs!


Summer Reading Recommendation

I just picked up a new book at Target to read on the beach. So many of the books I skimmed the backs of were about murders and detectives, divorcees, knitting circles or sewing circles or whatever--a lot of boring stuff, as far as I'm concerned. And then I saw this book by Alice Hoffman:



I started reading it yesterday and I think I'm probably halfway through--I was naughty and I took it out of my beach bag to read in the house!! I can never seem to keep a beach book for long if I really like it. Anyway, it reads very fast, and the story is full of imagination, love, danger, trouble, modern fairy tale. . . most of the elements that I love! I love books with settings that seem otherworldly and the imagination of the characters is just as meaningful as the "real" world.

I was thinking about that as I watched Big Fish again the other night, actually. If you have not seen this marvelous movie, do not continue reading this paragraph!! I do not want to ruin it for you!! SPOILER ALERT! Will (played by Billy Crudup) feels as though he doesn't know his father Edward (Albert Finney) because he tells so many fantastic tales that couldn't possibly be true. As a journalist, Will is obsessed with what actually happened. But a person's imagination is just as important to the creation of the person they are as the things that "really" happened. A lot of people get so troubled by movies where you can't tell what's "real"--I never worry about that.

But anyway, this is becoming an incredibly long post! I highly recommend The Story Sisters for quick and enjoyable reading; the story isn't always pleasant, but it has grabbed me, and I truly enjoy the writing style--it's rather poetic.

Go ye forth and read and imagine and be a style shape-shifter!

Collection Notes

Something Savage This way Comes
I have had SO MANY things swirling around in my head lately, but they're sort of coalescing into a collection of dark romance and slightly refined savagery. I'm hoping I can do these ideas justice--some attempts turn out to be offensive to the original idea.

Here's one portion of the inspiration. Right around 3:35 it gets really intense for me.


For this new collection, it's not really anything visual that's inspiring me--it's been more music. I've also been listening to "Disturbia" by Rihanna and "She Wolf" by Shakira lately, which intersects with this somehow--still raw, but it's kind of the industrial, insidious side of this imagined girl that this collection is made for--a contrast to her melancholy, wandering, earthy self. . . Needless to say, there will be leather, but there will be gauze; there will be metal, but there will be bone; black, but also brights. . . I'm really excited about this. Even more excited than I was about Haute Electro, maybe because I feel this collection will be saying something more personal.

Speaking of saying something more personal, here's some stuff I jotted around this idea as well. It's interesting to create in more than one medium--if I can't express the idea properly in one, I can try another!


The Hunter

The desert is the fulcrum of despair.
I ride my horse bareback, the wind
braided into my hair. From dark mesas

in the moonlight I see your horns, shadows
of your jaw--my love, my myth. Your mystery
whispers around the rocks, hushes

in a mountain stream. You twist out
of my grasp, wind through feathers. My father
warned me this journey was waste. I packed

my saddle anyway, packed my fur boots,
a wedding headdress. My wedding clothes
I rolled and left under my sister's pillow--

when I find you, you'll take me naked
in the river. I trust this truth. The wind
trails fingers through my hair.


So these are some of my seeds--we'll see what they grow to be.

Long Time No Blog

Wow, I have just gone missing lately, haven't I? Well the other part of my identity is assistant extraordinaire to my mother, who is the adviser to the senior class at our local high school. This week was their graduation and all the events that go along with it, and my time has been totally sucked up by that. But I have returned from the land of the graduates, and I just listed some new things at Frost on Etsy!


Hand Dyed Felted Gauze Scarf--Green Citrus

Cotton Gauze Adventures
I ordered some cotton gauze a week or 2 ago and I spent a lot of time ripping it and dyeing it--once that part of the process was done, I started felting on some of it, adding beading and embroidery. They're really summery, lightweight scarves, which is nice--plus, I just love doing anything with details and embellishments. That's the thing I enjoy the most about making any pieces, whether they be jewelry, scarves, or clothing.

I hope to have some new scarves and jewelry up soon--I've got some colorful ideas blooming in these parts and after I clean up from the whirlwind week, I'll be all over that!