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!