I’m preparing for my Hers & Furs 8-city tour with SB Fashion Week.
Deciding the feeling for the season is the most important decision you will make as a designer. It comes from the place where your heart and mind feel the voice of the outside world and translate that into something you wear. You have to be quiet inside to hear this communication as it speaks to you. It’s so easy to let “what everyone else is doing” make you deaf to your own voice, so you have to stay strong and be true to you. The art of fashion tells a story through body adornment, and you want your wearer to feel something when they put on your designs. You want to empower them with your feeling for the season, and that feeling is what inspires you to enter into the journey of turning color, cloth, texture and form into a character people want to become.
This season I want my wearer to feel empowered, vocal and bold, yet fragile and gorgeously feminine.
I love the contradictions in that. I believe we have both ends of every thought and feeling battling within for a place on the stage of life. At least I do. Possibly that makes me a little crazy! 🙂
Once, in my actor days, when I was getting headshots, I had a photographer who, before the shoot, sat me down and asked me to name the five feelings I wanted the photograph to say to the casting director when my photo, for that brief second, landed on top of the pile. That is probably the greatest artistic advise I’ve ever gotten, and those headshots got me a ton of work. Art should speak. It speaks to the person experiencing it with the feelings it’s been imbued with. So being aware of what you want to say is smart. Feelings are the etherial thread that an artist paints with, no matter the medium. I learned that as a writer, because writers always dig deep to nail down the theme of what they are writing.
Another thing I learned as a writer is that generally an artist tends to explore the same three to five themes in their lifetime collection of work. I find this to be true. I’ve had the same driving force inside ever since I was a child. I had a troll doll collection when I was little. In the smooth-haired trolls, you were supposed to undo the ponytail and put little pieces of paper inside to imbue the doll with life. Mind you, as a child I was painfully twisted and shy with pigeon-toed feet, a twisted spine (Scoliosis) and Dyslexia, so what I gave the doll is what I yearned for the world to see, not what I knew how to express. I found my smooth-haired doll a few years ago. I had given her three things: a heart, guts, and feelings. That’s been the canvas I’ve created on my whole life.
These sunnies are an adornment that speaks to the feeling of the Hers & Furs collection I will be presenting as I tour the country.
Who I am heard the voice of our day and out of that came an empowered, bold yet fragile and gorgeously feminine collection for both people and pet. These sunnies are part of that. You put them on and instantly find a pose of playful empowerment. All you need is glitter, dollar store glasses, some jewels, modpodge and glue.
(I changed my glue for the jewels from e-6000 to Aleenes Glass and Bead Glue. With e-6000 the jewels slip all over. Aleene’s Glass and Bead Glue does a better job of holding them in place.)