Melissa A. Mitchell Art Tights Collection Launches

The Atlanta artist behind Abeille Creations debuts 11 original designs on high-stretch tights, made to order and priced at $33.33 a pair.

The Melissa A. Mitchell Art Tights Collection launches Sept. 21, giving the Atlanta artist’s original designs a new canvas in 11 styles of high-stretch tights from her brand, Abeille Creations.

The idea began with a gap in Mitchell’s own closet. Ready to move into fall while staying warm, she wanted colorful art tights that felt like her, and she was not prepared to retire her shorts, skirts, and fun shoes just because the temperature dropped. When she could not find the tights she had in mind, she says she finally asked herself, “Why don’t I just make them?”

“I didn’t sit down and say, ‘I need to create a tights collection,’” Mitchell told Bacon Magazine. “I had a problem in my own closet.” She found a production partner, began experimenting with her artwork on tights, and turned the experiment into a collection.

Harlem Gets the First Look

Mitchell debuted the tights the weekend before launch at the Harlem School of the Arts during a Black Fashion World Foundation event, where she served as keynote speaker. The reaction reshaped her timeline. “People fell in love with them, started asking where they could get them,” she says, and the response convinced her to accelerate the release.

The sequence will feel familiar to founders: spot a gap, prototype with the right partner, test with a live audience, and move the date up when demand arrives. Each pair is made to order, so production begins once a customer places an order.

Inside the Melissa A. Mitchell Art Tights Collection: 11 Designs

The inaugural lineup features 11 original designs: Kofi, Essence of ABL, Wildly ABL, Ponce Pop, Queen Yaz, Legacy Leopard, Makena, Adinkra, Lenani, Pendo and Rangi. Each begins with original Mitchell artwork and carries its own palette, personality, and energy, which gives wearers 11 completely different ways to make their legs the canvas.

“Your Legs Are the Canvas” serves as the collection’s mantra, and “Same Art. New Places.” is the Abeille Creations philosophy that sits beside it.

Art That Leaves the Wall

For Mitchell, the tights extend a belief she has held about her work from the start: it was never meant to stay on the walls. She has spent years carrying her art from canvases to murals, clothing, accessories, home goods and what she calls “all kinds of unexpected places.” Now, she says, “your legs get to be the canvas.”

That range shows across her business. Mitchell founded Abeille Creations, which goes by ABL ( A Better Life) and sells apparel, including an A Better Life Collection, along with turbans, headwraps and masks, home decor and original art. Her website also promotes a new Melissa A. Mitchell Gallery at Bloomingdale’s Lenox Mall.

Her public work operates at an even larger scale. A self-taught artist who was born in Miami, raised in the Bahamas and has called Atlanta home for nearly 20 years, Mitchell designed the Trefoil Trail, a mural on the 17th Street Bridge walkway that features more than 100 soccer balls and the flags of 48 countries. According to citybiz, more than 100 Girl Scouts painted it during a day-long workshop on March 22, and the City of Atlanta commissioned it ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup matches in the city. An Essence profile puts her body of work at more than 500 original pieces and 40 murals.

Styling the Season

Mitchell describes the tights as a way to stretch a wardrobe into another season without losing color, personality or favorite pieces. Her suggestions include wearing them under shorts or a mini skirt, with a sweater dress, an oversized blazer or a statement coat, and with loafers, heels, boots or the fun shoes that have not yet gone into storage.

The collection page frames the pitch as a question: why settle for basic tights when legs can become a whole work of art? It promises a smooth, lightweight, second-skin feel from premium high-stretch fabric. “I want fall to feel colorful, magical, expressive and all things ABL,” Mitchell says.

Collection Details

The full lineup is available on the Abeille Creations collection page, where each design is offered in sizes small through 2XL.

More Pieces Are on the Way

The tights mark the start of a fall rollout. More pieces are coming, Mitchell says, as she continues finding new places, silhouettes and experiences for her original artwork.

She wanted to stay warm, spicy and colorful, and she built the piece that let her do all three. “Now I get to share that idea with everybody else,” she says.