This Art Gypsy now resides in Salt Lake City Utah with my friend CAROL. We are building a large studio in her house so we can film and teach classes and have a BIG LIFE. One should always have a partner in crime. Someone you can swear with and eat pie. Besides for moving I've also been sequestered working on my new class series called SPECTACULAR SPECTACULAR! Which is drawing and painting all things carnival. It's absolutely unlike any class out there now and has been on my mind for years. I will unleash the promotion of it on New Years Eve. But what has drawn me to stop working and peek in and say hello to you, is the idea of Art Gypsy Clothing. My god, I love everything about this:
Taken fro this Etsy Shoppe:
http://www.etsy.com/shop/JacketsbyJahne
This kind of stuff is already in Anthropology but you don't see it anywhere else. Probably because it's too hard to mass market. Haute couture means "high dress making", "high sewing", and custom clothing. In clothing it is considered fine art, not made for the masses but for the individual. Couture clothing is soulful and dreamy and usually impracticle. But then we have Altered Couture, which is the name for the above jacket. Altered means to "make different without changing into something else". In Haute couture you are starting with just fabrics and creating the entire thing, in Altered couture you are starting with something and adding and subtracting to it, also called Re-fashioned or Re-purposed. I LOVE THIS SO MUCH. It is taking a piece of mainstream clothing, made for everyone's different personalities, and combining it with fabrics and textures to make it all it's own. And while the idea of altered couture can apply to many different styles, the above picture describes the Gypsy Style I think about and dream about and wish I was. If I was the girl I really wanted to be, I would wear clothes like this. Not throw on a sweatshirt but this instead. I love that the mid section is uneven. That what you expect to be there is not. It is slightly off. And then BAM all these different fabrics and textures you don't expect jetting out into a flauncy flirty girly A line.
Who wears this? Little Red Riding Hood, under her cloak. It's earth tones and goes with the woods. I see it paired with leggins and thick high flat boots. Good for walking over crunchy leaves. It's durable and rugged, if the fabric gets a snag it only improves the distress of the design. It's cute and wearable without a girl worrying about how she is sitting or if it's going to get creased. Art Gypsies don't have time for that. But they want to wear things that celebrate their spirit. Their down to earth-ness, their patchworked emotions, their need for unburdonsome travel.
I want to be this.
