Fashion Designer and Illustrator Malene Grotrian is the artist behind the water-coloured fashion illustrations on Alara Cellars’ wine labels. Each wine’s flavour and ingredients are personified in the cover model, her personality, attitude and dress.
“When creating the unique look for each of Alara Cellar’s collection of wines, I go through a similar design process as when designing custom designs. In this process the wine is the personality and the dress is designed to embody her unique characteristics and composition.”
The path of weaving fashion and art together started early on for Danish born Malene Grotrian. Her childhood drawings were inspired in the desire to become a fashion designer and before she could sew, she sketched and painted all her ideas. Honing her fine art skills further, Malene learned to paint in watercolour and acrylics before pursuing the three dimensional in 2004 with an education as a Fashion Designer. With a job opportunity in hand Malene relocated to Canada to learn the craftsmanship from a tailor where she advanced her knowledge and technical skills.
After working in the industry for 4 years Malene decided in 2008 that it was time to follow her childhood dream and started her own ready to wear clothing label and custom designs. Within the first year of business and having made Vancouver her home by then, she was named one of Vancouver’s Top 10 Designers and had been invited to show at New York Fashion week. Her Gastown studio quickly became a sought for place to shop for celebrities and female executives.
In 2012 Malene embarked upon a deeper exploration of her abstract art and expanded her gallery of paintings into a variety of themes of fashion, women, energy and commissioned work. It is a curiosity that fuels her work and inspiration, going down an unknown path such as s new collaboration, painting a new object, theme, colour, medium or application technique.
Creating custom art is a passion project for Malene. “The conception process of custom art is very similar to the process of creating custom fashion, it is my ability to interpret the personality of my client that becomes the fashion. For art it is my ability to take my client’s request and interpret it into a reflection of them or the meaning behind their brand. This makes the art really personal and intrigues my curiosity, since every client becomes my muse and every project is a collaboration into the unknown.”