Rose du Désert

“Nothing in the wild ever stays the same even now I can feel the color of my heart changing” – Wilder

“{ des roses }“…From a resting landscape, they survived with their worn petals and unforgiving resilience. Through the challenges of wind and rain these roses face, there is unabashed beauty in survival and in the worn edges that show that we gave it all. ”

Fil de Vie’s third part collection, Rose du Désert, revels in Utah’s serene landscape as much as it does in its French birthplace. This collection has a strong sense of place. Resonating with the meditative and spiritual flow of mesas and rock formations, while respecting the land, it evokes a liberating ritual of dance and movement that celebrates life. With weightless organic silks, soft as the wisps of clouds that grace early spring skies and aflutter with petal-like flounces, this collection is equally bathed in the shimmer of sun and draped in moody shadows. Boldly printed ruffled silhouettes, serpent-like trains, embroidered silks, and encrustations of florals woven from the earth, reflect an uninterrupted stream of local vegetation. A palette lifted from the desert paints the pieces in the rich red and earthen hues of an awakening canyon landscape, the vibrant yellows of feather – like spring petals, the saturated blues of a spring afternoon, and the deep golds, ambers, and ever-changing pinks of desert skies.

Here in a dramatic and the magical backdrop of Amangiri, a space that holds a special healing place in my heart, with muses — Dani Fortin and Erica Almeida, we continue the narrative of this timeless capsule collection. A narrative that references the suspension between fairytale dream and fulsome reality, the regal past & present preservation of native lands. Earth, Sky, Water, and Fire – Nature, Movement and Freedom – all principles braided into an ethereal collective. Rose du Désert travels a bridge through time between the art of today and art history of the past, between the worlds of great poets & the spirit of Nature.

As someone who has bloomed an identity thru travel, this is my most clearly autobiographical collection. A creative collaboration between what I see, create and feel that makes me whole, this collection is comprised of 13 frames photographed in film, as the rhythm of the sun governed our days. With the intent to portray reflections of ourselves through a truer lens, the chorus of light from sunrise to sunset imbued just the right imperfect quality, to perfectly recreate what it felt like to stand there in each breathtaking moment. The barely-touched images are languid, luxurious, and dreamlike – an authentic representation of the collection and muses in the setting that brought them to life.

“Each day is the birth and death of a new sun” – a proverb of the Navajo Indians

I’m always looking forward. With the wind that carries no colors to warn you of her arrival, comes the uncertainty of the day – we can never truly know anything. As a cancer survivor – I’m living to the fullest today and planning for everything to be even better and more beautiful tomorrow. The world recently came to a pause, solitude as a state of being became all too familiar – and it’s emotion and creative impact are reflected in the pieces of this collection. As Fil de Vie continues on its lifeline, I want it to celebrate the quality of life. To celebrate being present in a single moment – to simply be still. And to me that holds infinite meaning and power.

“The moment was all;
the moment was enough.”
– Virginia Wolf