Erika Dress, heather gray arriving in store next week!

Up next in production….more season-less looks

With much anticipation it is only a matter of days until the next generation of the Erika dress is back!  Heather gray as promised.  There are only just over a dozen and a wait list started so let the girls know now if you would like to pre-order.

Today was a taste of the in-between weather that throws our fashion sense in to a frenzy.  Not too hot, not too cold.  Even though I get excited right around Labor Day and want to transition my entire closet from summer to fall with the anticipation of getting to wear my first full on fall outfit, I know I still won’t be able to wear most for weeks. (I also admit that I have already purchased my first piece of fall footwear – some amazing olive suede over the knee boots from Headstart! which I sadly will wait another 8 weeks to wear) Too early for fall, too late for summer…..

We have had a lot of fun this year coming up with some great pieces to make the transition easier.  A lot of jersey dresses that will carry you from now until fall (and if you aren’t sick of living in them for 6 months back until spring again), a blazer or two, drapey cardigans & vests, dresses for work and even the perfect black pencil pant and skirt. (it isn’t just me who loves a good pencil right? ).   That’s right, our Audrey pencil pant that sold out last year has been reinvented and will be in the store next week.

Maryann; rayon jersey dress in black or purple arriving in store on September 4th

Audrey black cotton sateen pencil pant arriving in store early next week.

SA VA: Native Gypsy  community fashion show & street fair  October 13, 2010

This is the first part in a series of blogs leading up to our fall fashion show: SA VA Native Gypsy.  It will be our 3rd outdoor public fashion show since opening almost a year ago.  We are really excited this year, not just because we have the luxury of planning more than 3 weeks before the event, but because the theme was

Native Gypsy Inspiration

sheer inspiration for us.  SA VA Native Gypsy comes to life from the idea of the grounded, community oriented person who has a traveling worldly soul.  We hope

that it emulates our vision of a woman who is transformative from one day to the next.  It will represent our moments of native, ethnic and earthly style as well as our urban, career driven lives.

The normal industry cycle of design and production is a long one.  Usually, the designer collections that you see in stores available for purchase in say, September, were designed 18 months to two years prior.  There is a huge machine of trend forecasting, product development, textile & trim sourcing, sales and marketing (i.e. fashion week) and then finally production & shipping that happens.  It is kind of like trying to steer a huge ship.  It was challenged over the last ten years by retailers like H&M who increased the pace to market of trend styles.  They started taking trends from runway and introducing them to market long before designers could get their product in to the market.  What we do is just a little bit different.  Since we design, source, manufacture and sell everything at the same place we have a different product life cycle.  The design of this collection was started in June and was completed at the end of July.  From there we started first patterns & samples in muslin and worked out colors & fabrications and this week Katya and I were in New York sourcing textiles.  From here, we will finalize our patterns through fittings and making production samples in actual fabric and then digitize, grade and mark our

first fall collection fabrics purchased

patterns.  We start production on our first pieces for the fall on September 1st, 6 weeks before the show.  We are a smidgen behind schedule but we shouldn’t have a problem with the 28 styles that need to be complete for the show.  We will be releasing half of them by October 13th and the balance in the following 3 weeks.

As many of our friends and loyal customers know, we care very much about how the clothing we sell is made.   Every item in our store has a globe paper hang tag that indicates the element of ethical fashion that applies:  Locally made, Fair-trade, organic, recycled, Made in the U.S.A., Hand Made.   We are really excited because now you can shop all of our sustainable clothing by these categories on our web store too!

When we opened the store almost a year ago, there were some items that we couldn’t make or source ourselves so we bought them from other vendors.  Regardless, any item sold in the store has to have one of these socially conscious element.  The good news is now that we have a year under our belt, about 90% of the clothing is made by us in our Garment Center – event better yet – this fall we will have our own domestically made line of sweaters and local made denim!