Hat: Autumn. Collection: Garden of Eden

The hat for the Autumn dress is made with “aiguillette”, a braided cord, made in a small, very old, factory near Moscow. This factory, in business for over 100 years, even produced braid for the Imperial Infantry officers before the 1917 October Revolution! When I first went there the main artist of the factory turned out to be a young woman who was deaf, which is surprising for the USSR, where disabled people were kept out of sight not usually put in leadership positions. She affably laid out in front of us the braids and ribbons that they produced; everything was of a very high quality, but extremely limited in colors and designs because the factory did not have enough resources. We purchased a lot, not knowing exactly how we would use it all, just wanting to help out the talented artists in the small factory.
There was one roll of Ochre colored silk cord - the design of which probably hadn’t changed since the time of the Tzars - that lay in my workshop, unused, for a very long time.
It was when I was working on the creation of The Autumn Dress that I picked up the forgotten roll of silk braid and it became this beautiful hat, decorated with exquisite flowers and berries from France. It is the same in our own lives - you sit in a corner, and people around you do something great, and you feel unnecessary and forgotten; yet there are no unnecessary lives in God's great plan. The most important thing is to stay faithful and open for God to take you off the shelf one day and create something new and beautiful out of you.
Dress Autumn by Aleona Isakova. Photo by Yvonne Taylor
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