The Beaumonts are ready for the holidays (if you have not yet met fifth avenue’s most stylish anthropods you can learn more here).
Tiny Fortuny stockings are hung, presents are wrapped, cookies baked, hearth blazing and the whole family is trimming the tree – such festive ants.
Merry Christmas!
Meet the Beaumonts, fifth avenue’s most stylish anthropods.
To celebrate Fortuny’s 2016 Micromondo collection (which means micro–world in Italian) I created a miniature world of cosmopolitan, domestic bliss inhabited by sophisticated ants with a taste for midcentury furniture and modern art. They also really love christmas – that’s part 2.
The ants are 6 inches tall and made from the Micromondo collection. I made furniture, drapery etc. – everything a fully appointed ant penthouse needs – from the new wools, velvets and linens as well as many of the classic patterns – the blue and bronze above is one of my favorites. I also made ant art – I got super into the art making – and family portraits – lots of tiny details.
This August feels so thick and slow and sleepy, everything shimmers and that strange cicada sound – it all feels a little otherworldly to me. Even the creatures I’m making are golden and languid. August is also when I work on holiday designs. I’m planning on some ornament patterns for the shop and I would love your opinion on a couple things. I posted a survey here – it’s super brief – just 3 questions and as a thank you you get a coupon for 30% off patterns (the survey is closed). I had fun with my handmade Christmas last year and you can check out that post if you’d like to get an early start – there are links to patterns and free projects and ideas. Also in the holiday department – I just saw samples of designs I made for Crate and Barrel this year and I can’t wait to show you – I’m so happy with them.
Have a lovely weekend – I’ll leave you with a couple sleepy Fortuny creatures.
Louis, he got all dressed up for you in his summer best.
I’ve been working on a huge collection of creatures for Fortuny. Today I’m fitting patient foxes for kimonos – it takes a long time and they never complain or fidgit – they are always solemn and still. The fit is precise – especially at the back of the neck and they are fully lined and have fancy obis. Sewing them is still complicated for me, it’s a different sort of sewing than I usually do and figuring it out is interesting – it activates my beginners brain – always a good thing.
Dressing the foxes reminds me of a story I read as a child. I must have been about nine when I first read it and I still have the book, an illustrated collection of stories for bigger little folks.
“The Doll That Was Rich” was a favorite story about 2 little girls named Cosy and Marlie – the names alone intrigued me. It was read so frequently that the book still falls open to the page:
” On the table in front of them were two dolls, one dressed and one partially dressed. Beside them was an open parcel, full of bits of bright colored silk; and beside that again was a work basket.”
I still love the idea of a basket of fancy scraps and somebody to dress up.
Sun showers and foxes and secret forest weddings – I loved this project.
I spent the better part of the autumn working on something special with Fortuny to help introduce its first new fabric collection in more than two years. The collection plays with the idea of what is seen and unseen and draws inspiration from Japanese folklore of “The Fox’s Wedding”. The legend is that foxes marry in secret in the forest and only during a sun shower – far from prying human eyes.
From Fortuny’s creative director Mickey Riad:
“We decided upon the theme of ‘The Fox’s Wedding’ as we were playing around with halftones and production techniques,” “The way a sun shower can fool what your eye sees, Japanese legend attributes this phenomenon to foxes that often play tricks on humans. The idea that the new collection plays tricks on the eye fit perfectly with that theme, in addition to the pattern and color choices that were inspired by Japanese art and textiles. ”
The collection is being introduced in Paris today. Three foxes traveled to Paris for the occasion, another two will leave for Venice this week and two will remain in NYC at the Fortuny Showroom.
For the past few weeks I’ve lived with fox companions and it’s a little sad to let them go – they so inhabited this place.
