Trundle Manor Expands Creepy Empire

Trundle Manor is expanding its world of creepy collections with a “Villain Couture” clothing line, allowing the masses to express their inner femme fatales or Frankensteins.

Rachel Rech, who lives at in Swissvale with her boyfriend, its creator Anton Miriello, studied costume design at Point Park University where she just graduated. The idea for a clothing line came to Miriello as a project that could be led by Rech, who has an undeniable fashion sense.

“We sort of have a Trundle Manor family that has been helping us come up with ideas and we are almost like a collective at this point,” Rech said. “Everyone is adding their own input. We have come up with a lot of different villainous personas that we are going to base a lot of the clothing around.”

So far, the silent movie villain, the evil doctor, the femme fatale, and the woman who steals candy from babies all have been inspirations in the latest designs.

“We are trying to take things like that that can be done less as costumes and more as everyday wear - sort of the modified version of everyone’s idea of that villain,” Miriello said. “Something you’d be more comfortable with in the open world and less likely to get mocked continuously because of it,” he added with a laugh.

Rech reiterated the idea that the villian couture clothing line will be crafted for everyday people who want to leave a mark and inspire wonder in others.

“We are in love with a lot of old fashioned ideals and ladies and gentlemen who dress up very nice every day, and I think it should still be that way,” she said. “We are trying to bring some wonderment to people and class it up a little bit.”

Rech and Miriello both will be designing the items, which will have accessible prices.

While the original plan was to have the collection formed before this Halloween season, the couple switched gears and decided to create a traveling creep show for fundraising purposes that all will go toward the couture project.

“We are used to funding everything ourselves and thought it might be possible for us to raise money for an artistic endeavor,” Miriello said. “We’re not a side show because we’re not on the side of anything.”

The idea of the creep show is to create an atmosphere that serves as an extension of Trundle Manor, where visitors can find everything from taxidermy to devil mermaids to a collection of meat cleavers. Miriello and Rech will pack a 12-foot circus tent with strange things. Miriello said he wants the traveling show to pop up in different locations “with no explanation.”

“It’s our goal to inspire wonder in people,” Rech said. “We are inspired by so many old world things and classic movies and P.T. Barnum and the whole idea of showmanship and seeing something that isn’t normal. The whole idea of the American sideshow has gone by the wayside in the past hundred years or so and we want to show people something different.”

Miriello said they have been to a few conventions and plan to take the traveling creep show to flea markets, car cruises and maybe even a few Giant Eagle parking lots.

“Maybe when we are at these flea markets we will find some new pieces for the house or the show,” Rech said. “Everything feeds into our empire.”

For more information or to schedule a tour of Trundle Manor, visit www.trundlemanor.com. To donate to the traveling creep show, visit indiegogo.com/trundlecreepshow.