Today we are releasing another designer that will be apart of the Spring Market: Enchantment! We will be featuring Threads Art Studio and will be talking about how Karen Bennet, the founder of the company, got her start in the fashion world!

Karen Bennett is a fiber artist from Arvada. She began her art career as a hand weaver and then worked as an art teacher for 25 years.  During that time she supplemented her income by sewing wedding dresses and teaching sewing classes. After retiring she returned to her roots as a fiber artist. She creates her clothing and jewelry from the handmade silk and wool fabric she makes to use in her art work. She creates her garments using technique more familiar to artists than the fashion world. The result is art-style cool, something that could be seen in a gallery, but in reality is being worn by a woman.

Her handmade fabric is an explosion of textures, focused on the inherent quality of the threads in the raw fiber (hence, the name of her business, Threads Art Studio). Sumptuous black and creamy satin colors are predominant in her jackets and often hair-thin threads of metallic Mylar are embedded in the handmade fabric. Wild, exotic colors are used in her necklaces and flower brooches made from recycled sari silk from India. Her jewelry could be described as luxurious tatters because intricate small beads woven into the colored threads and in some pieces an actual silk cocoon is used as a large bead.

Her jackets are one-of-a-kind and are sold with the accompanying fashion sketch that inspired them. Many of the jackets have unique hand beaded elements that blur the lines between trim and cloth. All the jackets are designed for the comfort of the wearer, combining looser fitted styles with top stitching details seen in tailor garments. For the Denver Spring Fashion show she also has two summer lines: batik crop tops adorned with her hand-made silk necklaces and open lace jackets reminiscent of Downton Abbey fashion.

Thread Arts Studio website is currently under construction, so you’ll just have to come to the market to see her full collection!