Creating Art Couture at Kiss of the Wolf Studio is a process with many steps. The first is inspiration. Inspiration is followed by hours at the painting table, often including two or more separate techniques. It can take as long as three days before the silk is ready to be made into clothing. This is the story of creating the Miró design.

Creating Art Couture: The Miró Swing Blouse

Happy in the StudioLori takes advantage of a day alone in the Kiss of the Wolf Studio to create a new design.

BeginningFirst stages: broad strokes of color topped with more precise ones in resist dye.

Layers of MiróHaving finished the first two stages in the process, the filling in begins.

Miro Swing BlousePainting the fabric for this one-of-a-kind blouse took an entire day.

Miro Swing BlouseSwing Blouse, Miro, side view

Miro Swing Blouse, back

Inspiration

The inspiration for the Miró design came from a visit to “Joan Miró: Birth of the World” at MoMA in New York City. Lori was there for the Grand Opening of daughter Serene’s shop, Leroy’s Place.

After coming home, Lori spent a day putting her inspiration onto silk. She stretched six yards on the smallest of the three painting tables and began to work.

Painting the silk

The designer paints broad strokes of dye on wet silk and layers them with precise lines of resist dye. More colors float between and around those lines. The timing for each process is critical. Some painting is done while the previous layer is still wet, others, after drying.

Finishing touches

Once complete, the silk was dried and steamed to set the dyes, then rinsed and dried again. In the end, the day’s work resulted in five and a half yards of finished silk.

Lori gave the fabric to Kiss of the Wolf’s master tailors, Yan Lan and his wife, Rong Jiao Wang, to sew. The results? One single, beautifully crafted swing blouse.

Creating Art Couture

The original blouse sold almost immediately, but you can see it here. If you love the design as much as we do, please call and talk to us about ordering one like it. It won’t be the same. Each piece produced in our studio is one of a kind.

That’s the difference between Making Fashion and Creating Art Couture.

Lori takes advantage of a day alone in the Kiss of the Wolf Studio to paint a new design, inspired by the work of Spanish painter, Joan Miró.