Rose Mortem is an American fashion designer. She is married to front manAshton Nyte, of the gothic metal band The Awakening. Rose is most widely known for her dark romantic fashion stylings and her involvement with underground music. Launching in 1998, the Rose Mortem fashion label has been featured in several publications including Mick Mercer's cult classic, 21st Century Goth. Her work has been repeatedly featured in goth subculture magazines including Gothic Beauty, Auxiliary Magazine, Darklife, Cynfeirdd, Terrorizer, and Fangoria. Rose also creates fashions for independent films and theatre productions, and live performers of varying kinds including members of several bands, symphonies, operas and chamber music ensembles. Use of velvets, chiffons, satins, tulles and lace with sharply angled hemlines and layered skirting have become the label's trademark style. As a musician and promoter, Rose is linked most notably with legendary gothic rock band The Awakening of South Africa. She has worked on many tours and events for gothic rock, synthpop, and alternative rock musicians including Wolfsheim, Faith and the Muse, and The Mission; and held resident DJ positions under the name Mary Chain as tribute to post-punk rockers The Jesus and Mary Chain. According to interviews with Rose, her designs are inspired greatly by musicians, ranging widely in style, from David Bowie to Loretta Lynn. The designer also draws on her studies of Bohemianism, Dark Romanticism, and love for the literature, art and music of the Decadent movement. She credits her knowledge of fashion design entirely to her mother and grandmother's instruction, and to her "youthful passion for dissecting thrift storewedding 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." In 2009, Rose Mortem announced a partnership with South Africanrecord label Intervention Arts to distribute The Awakening's albums in the USA. Shortly thereafter, Rose joined the band on piano and keyboards, and was featured in their 2009 release entitled Tales of Absolution and Obsoletion and the single Fault released on the band's 2014 Anthology XV compilation. Rose describes her latest fashion since joining The Awakening as "combining the elegance and extravagance of classic New Wave and Gothic fashion with touches of Bohemian elegance and Lolita chic — updated and reinvented for the modern world." In a 2015 Gothic Beauty magazine feature, the artist states her latest fashion stylings are directly inspired by her most recent music collaborations with rocker husband Ashton Nyte.
