hi, nice to meet you!

I want to introduce you to a project called avalove.

avalove is an artist, an idea, a collective, an inspiration. It is something to wear, something to keep you warm, something to inspire you to dream, to go disco dancing (oh yes, that’s a thing right now, you can even roller skate too!), to take risks, and to be part of a community of people who care about creativity, about one another, and about the world around them.

Every piece you have bought over the years has supported this creative world and the people who have helped make it possible. You have supported my dream, their dreams, and then, when you take avalove home with you, the biggest magic trick of them all happens:

you live your own dream in avalove too.

avalove becomes part of your life and your story.

She is the genie that gives you the inspiration to GRANT YOUR OWN WISH.

Yes.

And sometimes avalove can be something very simple: sitting quietly and watching the summer heliotropes turn toward the sun.

avalove is all of these things.

HOW IT STARTED

avalove was started by an artist devoted to figuring out how to make a living using her own creativity.

I started by standing on the street in SoHo after hours from my job at CosmoGIRL! magazine and on weekends, selling the things I made.

I didn’t start a clothing brand.

I started a creative project where I could make things.

Because of YOU, avalove became a life project.

Now I want to tell you a little more about who I am, why I make avalove, and what goes into each piece, because there is a lot more magic involved in the making of avalove than you might know.

My mom is a working healer, and healing runs in my family. That is a different place to start from, and maybe it makes my world a little more magical than most.

That worldview inevitably finds its way into avalove.

WHAT IS AVALOVE?

avalove is a special place. A community. A daydream. A clothing shop.

It is a place filled with magical curios and talismans meant to bring in the light. A place to be a healer and to be healed.

It is a love poem. A poem about the earth. A love letter to brilliance and to the silence inside beautiful things.

THE AVALOVE PROJECT

I want to let you see more of the person behind the things: why I make them, what inspires them, and the stories and symbols inside them that make them special.

The places, poems, people, animals, totems, dreams, images and strange little thoughts that make me who I am find their way into what I create. There is always a poem that belongs to the piece.

Intention has always been at the heart of avalove.

I want to show you more of that world, because all of these things become part of what makes an avalove piece what it is.

I want avalove to become more fully what she has always been underneath the wearable charms:

a creative project.

Maybe that means making more non-functional art. Experimenting with different mediums. More limited-edition pieces or one-of-a-kind pieces made by hand. More stories. Healing spaces and projects. And much more happening online, so I can be here with you and in my creative space making things rather than spending so much of my life on the road.

And eventually, it means a barn + studio + shop.

We actually have the beginning of that now in Woodstock, New York, at avalove talisman at the bearsville theater. 

A place where we can make avalove there, and bring limited pieces into the shop, put new work online, experiment, make art and send it directly out into the world.

A living creative project. Artist-made. People-powered.

Directly from me to you.

THANK YOU FOR BEING PART OF IT

Thank you, each and every one of you, for visiting avalove, telling her your stories, giving her your time, letting her dress you, and letting something I made become part of your own life.

I LOVE when you come to see me dressed in an avalove piece from 20 years ago, or tell me the stories of where your pieces have traveled and what you have done in them.

Thank you for doing that, keep telling me your stories!

It inspires me to keep going.

I invite you to join me here with avalove as an artist, a clothing maker, a dreamer, a healer and a poet.

Intention makes everything more beautiful. 

And maybe what we need more of is simply this:

consciousness.

The world needs more consciousness intention in what we do. What we buy. What we wear. How we treat one another. What we choose to put into the world. How we choose to nourish ourselves from the inside out (not outside in!)

This is just the beginning. Perfection is hard, but discussion, education, and community are worth being imperfectly perfect and opening the doors to imagining something great.

Thank you for being with me.

I can’t wait!

love,

ava