Rose Mortem | |
|---|---|
| Nationality | American |
| Known for | Gothic Fashion |
| Label | Rose Mortem |
| Spouse | Ashton Nyte |
| Website | rosemortem |
Rose Mortem is an Americanfashion designer, musician, model, and entrepreneur. Rose is most widely known for herdark romantic fashion stylings and as a member of theGothic rock bandThe Awakening. She is a graduate ofHarvard University.[1]
Launching in 1998, the Rose Mortem fashion label was featured in several publications includingMick Mercer's cult classic,21st Century Goth.[2] Her work was frequently featured ingoth subculture magazines includingGothic Beauty,Cynfeirdd,Terrorizer, andFangoria. Rose also created fashions for independent films and theatre productions, and live performers of varying kinds including members of several bands, symphonies, operas and chamber music ensembles.[3] Use of velvets, chiffons, satins, tulles and lace with sharply angled hemlines and layered skirting became the label's trademark style.[4] As a musician, Rose is linked most notably withgothic rock bandThe Awakening ofSouth Africa and has been married to the band's front manAshton Nyte since 2009.[5] In addition to live touring, she is credited with taking several of the band's album photographs and has filmed and appeared in many of their music videos.[6]
According to interviews with Rose, her designs are inspired greatly by musicians, ranging widely in style, fromDavid Bowie toLoretta Lynn.[7][not specific enough to verify] The designer also draws on her studies ofBohemianism,Dark Romanticism, and love for the literature, art and music of theDecadent movement. She credits her knowledge of fashion design entirely to her mother and grandmother's instruction, and to her "youthful passion for dissecting thrift store wedding gowns." Rose attributes her creativity to her eccentric upbringing by a non-nuclear family of various artists, and her long-time obsession with "making fashions that feel like music."[8]
In 2009, Rose Mortem announced a partnership with South African record label Intervention Arts to distributeThe Awakening's albums in the US. Shortly thereafter, Rose joined the band on piano and keyboards, and was featured in their 2009 release entitledTales of Absolution and Obsoletion and the single Fault released on the band's 2014Anthology XV compilation. Rose describes her latest fashion since joining The Awakening as "combining the elegance and extravagance of classicNew Wave andGothic fashion with touches ofBohemian elegance andLolita chic — updated and reinvented for the modern world."[4] In a 2015Gothic Beauty magazine feature, the artist states her latest fashion stylings are directly inspired by her most recent music collaborations with rocker husbandAshton Nyte.
In 2019, Rose Mortem announced to fans that she was taking a hiatus from running her company; in 2021, she announced that after twenty years, she was stopping work in fashion to focus on music and her chosen field of Industrial-Organizational Psychology.[1]