saturday morning

I don't know when I became such a morning person, but I truly love them. I'm so much more focused and productive. Maybe it's just because of the coffee? That's highly likely.

Another new little mixed media sketch. This one is going to be part of a series where I take little scraps and essentially do a paperdoll with them. So much fun!



Yes, I'll be having some more of these on my etsy page, too.

arctic blast 2010

Brrrrrrrr! It's so cold outside in New York today. It's nice just staying in and working from home. Lately, I've been enjoying starting my day by sketching. I have to say, it's been awhile since I've done much sketching (other than rough, little doodles), and I'm loving it! It's quite a nice change from being hunched over a sewing machine all day.



PS Nicole: That's one of your lace swatches in the bottom! Your dress is going to be amazing! I can't wait to do it! :)

PPS to everyone else: I'm selling off some of these sketches on my Etsy page now.

online shop now up!

So, it's still under construction, but it's up for now. This is a private online shop of my bridal styles. More to come next week, but I currently have a big sale going on on my most popular styles to kick it off.

The Julietta, Betty White and Helene are all on sale for today and tomorrow only. So if you're in the market for a gown, it's a deal to jump on!

lovely wedding

I love it when clients send me in pictures of their weddings! It's already great to be a part of someone's big day by making the dress and it's work that I really enjoy, but it's even better when I get to see how it all turned out.

I worked with Neeve this past year, to create a customized version of my eco-friendly Helene dress. Neeve and her new husband Justin were looking to keep with having everything in their wedding made right here in Brooklyn, and were wed in a lovely spot in Carroll Gardens.

Such a lovely couple! Congrats, Neeve and Justin!

(photos by Susannah Gill)







PS. Don't you just LOVE the red shoes she wore with it?!

Moving sale!

Hi guys! I know, sorry it's been FOREVER since a post! Busy busy busy lately, but I promise pretty pictures and new news soon!

I am finally moving my studio this week (today and tomorrow). And I thought I'd see if anyone in the New York area might be interested in some FREE FABRIC!!

Yes, that's right...FREE! I have a lot of it, and just need to let it go. Some are small pieces, and some have quite a bit of yardage to them, but I just know I'll never get around to using them.

And yes, I'm totally exploiting my blog here as an alternative to craigslist! :)



On a side note, I have lots of samples that I'll be unloading in the next week also to make more room, there was just no time for it this week unfortunately. Preview below.


**Edit: Move complete!

sample sale ongoing!

Woah, sorry for the very long break in posting! Life and work have been quite busy with some big changes this summer.

I'm currently moving my studio, and therefore will be getting rid of dozens of my samples in the next month. Yay! It feels nice to make space and transition.

They will all be here on my esty page. Here are a couple of them. And check back again, soon since there are sure to be more in the next weeks to come. :)

Sushi for a good cause

I have been honored by having a sushi roll named after me at Portland Restaurant H50. Exciting!

For all the month of June, 50% of the sale price go to benefit my charity of choice: OCEANA, which is an ocean conservation organization that is a leading authority on ramifications of the horrible Gulf oil spill. Shame on BP for ruining the Ocean.

The chef called me up, and asked me which ingredients I like. I pretty much eat foods only according to the sauces I can dip them in or pour all over them. I'm a condiment-aholic. I like that the roll he conjured up for me has plenty of that, plus avocado!

Here is the fancy description, as per the press release:
"cabbage salad and spicy aioli sushi roll is filled with nori and seasoned rice; topped with fresh carrots, avocado and tomato; finished with togarashi and diakon radish sprouts and served with tomato coulis sauce."

So, all my friends in Portland or for anyone who is visiting, you'll have to go try it and let me know how it tastes!

behind the scenes

Yesterday, I did a photoshoot with a very talented photographer and some very nice models. The whole team was great. The weather wasn't too cooperative, but luckily the rain held off for just long enough.
We went way up to St. John's Cathedral and I took a lot of candid shots with my iphone. Here are a couple. More are here on my Flickr. I'll post some of the final images from the photographer soon, too.

???

My 30th birthday happens to fall on the date 10-10-10. (It equals 30!) .
Being the bad, indecisive, procrastinating Libra that I am, I have no plans for it other than knowing I'm going to go to Portland, where most of my friends are. I have realized it would fall on this date for about 7 years now. I have no excuses for being such a last-minute planner.

My question is: What the heck should I do on this magical day?! Maybe I'll make a poll. Any suggestions?

The bad thing about such a numerically significant date is that, yes, everyone in the world is planning on getting married on this day. Therefore, it'll be hard to book venue rentals. And it is now less than 5 months away. Oh my!

betty white

Another pic from my shoot on Friday:

even better

Well, as much fun as it was to try on my clothes and snap pictures, I have to say I much rather leave it to a professional model and take my place behind the camera instead. Here are a couple of shots from a shoot that I just did on Friday. My good friend, Nathan, did the makeup. I did the hair, and was our photographer. Most of the credit can go to our model, though. She was fantastic!


I'm really loving playing the role of photographer lately. It motivates me to make more things, simply for the enjoyment of later shooting them on a model. Perhaps the most enjoyable part of the creative process because I can step back admire the finished product. I've always had the tendency to think about how something will be photographed while I'm creating it, so it's sort of fun for me to be the one to do it sometimes.

More pictures to come!

meet the girls

Two, actually three, new dresses are up on my Etsy page, but these two I made last week and am really loving right now. They are part of my Spring '11 Bridal mini-collection, but the samples are for sale up there now.

The Betty White, (because the skirt reminds me of her hair!) Is entirely eco-friendly, made up of organic cotton and small, salvaged scraps.

And the Bea Arthur, because well, she looks like a Golden Girl, too, sorta.
The one bad thing about really nice weather on the weekends is that models tend to cancel. Argh! Hence, the pictures with mostly my head chopped off here. Whenever the headless model makes an appearance, that's usually the case. She works for free at a moment's notice!

part two

Here are some shots of the bridesmaids dresses that I also did. Unfortunately, I didn't really get any good shots of them on the girls because I used up all my memory card space on shots of the bride and her dress at the wedding.

This is probably the only exception to my "I don't do bridesmaids, too" rule. And it got reinforced after this time, because though even with the best of intentions to have this dress done by a place I've used before for production, too many things went wrong and they got very delayed, so that I pretty much ended up making six of these myself. That beautiful Italian satin-faced silk organza and I were not the best of friends in the beginning, but in the end I won the fight and was pretty happy with them.

I ended up ordering more of this material because I fell in love with it, so be on the lookout for some things out of it in the future. (my Etsy, later today) ;)

a labor of love

Well, it should be known by now that whenever I disappear for awhile without posting so much as a peep, I'm either working on a collection and it's close to fashion week or I'm working around the clock to finish a wedding dress, and trying to out-do myself.

I recently finished the wedding gown of a friend that I have known since childhood. I have known Erica since I was probably about 10 or 11 years old. We were in all the same dance classes and pretty much inseparable during and out of class, sometimes having to be separated by our teacher for giggling too much.

Erica was a dream client to make a dress for. She trusted me completely, and let me have total freedom with just a couple of guidelines: She wanted a low back, and no rhinestones or sparkles. Imagine that! After all those years of dance where costumes could never have enough sparkle or glitter, we've both decided we've had enough rhinestones for a lifetime. Ha!

The dress that we ended up with, is my favorite wedding gown of all, I think. I'm glad it went to a good friend. I was lucky enough to come out to California and attend the wedding up in wine country on one of the most beautiful days. Such a lovely couple and a beautiful wedding!
This was the first time, that I have actually been able to see one of my wedding dresses walk down the aisle. Well, any of my dresses walk down any aisle, actually. I never have gotten to sit in the audience during one of my fashion shows either. It was so nice to be able to enjoy this rare occasion.

I also did the bridesmaid dresses as well, and will talk about those in a following post. I took tons of pictures! Enjoy!

polaroids

My favorite iphone App of the moment: ShakeIt Lite. It makes a polaroid camera out of your phone and is hours of entertainment!

Fall 2010 lookbook

first look

This is one of the images of my Fall 2010 lookbook, which I'm finalizing this week.
I ended up taking all of the pictures this time, because I just wanted to get it done and out of the way. I'm learning a bit more about lighting techniques, so the next photo shoot that I do will hopefully be even better. It's fun having another creative outlet and I'm excited to experiment more!

(the model is Karalyn!)

working pics

I snapped a ton of pictures these past few months, but I've been too busy to go through them all until recently.

Here are a couple that I took while creating textures for my Fall 2010 collection.
And this one, which I may have posted before, but I'll post anyway because Monkey's just too cute sometimes and also a very good assistant. Actually...moments later she probably growled, hissed and stormed off. She doesn't handle constructive criticism very well, apparently.

spring cleaning

(eventhough, technically not yet Spring; especially not here in NY!)

I've posted some samples up on Etsy this week, because currently my rack is pulling out of the wall because it's too heavy. And now my cutting tables are all covered with clothes to alleviate the racks, and so I've been cutting on the floor.

I do need to get more racks, but a quick solution is spring cleaning the studio of things I've been holding on to. I need to do more than just a few samples, though. It's so hard to part with some these pretty things, and I am definitely a pack rat! :)

I need to make even more room, because I'm currently having a few styles from my Spring collection produced that I'll be selling on my website and in NY.This is one of the lovelies I'm letting go of. I might have a few more throughout the week, too.
(photo by Caitlin Bellah)
This is how my racks used to look last spring, shortly after I moved in. Color organized and all! Ahh, memories....

Fashion Week Fall 2010

I've been so swamped with work for the last month preparing for fashion week, that I didn't have a moment to even post my typical "sorry, for not posting in awhile" posts.

Ahh, it's so nice to have it all done and over with, and considering having an incredibly stressful past couple of weeks due to my late start on the collection, it all went pretty well and I'm quite happy with it. There's definitely more of a healthy dose of commercial pieces that I'll be able to do production on and that can be worn everyday, and then there are my artistic pieces that scratch the itch of my desire to sculpt and create.

The inspiration was topography, but done in a very feminine romantic way. Yes, an excuse to make lots of noodles and layers that I love in plenty of eco-friendly and organic materials. Basically, I made a lot of things that I enjoyed creating and would love to have in my closet.

I was so lucky in the last week to have help from not only my friend Suede from my season, but Maya from season 7 came to my studio the night before and helped me until about 2 in the morning. What a dear and a life-saver!

I think my favorite two pieces ended up being the last two that I worked on: This eco-felt topographical dress which I hammered out in the wee early hours of the morning the day of the show (The material is made from recycled plastic soda bottles), and the long teal low-back gown (which Suede and I were affixing the skirt embellishments on backstage before the show). And of course I see so many little things that I nit-pick at and will be fixing before production.

All I can say is, I will definitely be starting for next season this week. No more last minute stressstravaganzas like this. For some reason, I reverted back to bad old habits of thinking that I can do everything myself on this collection. And I did mostly, but without the help of other very talented people in the final hours none of this would be possible. I can't thank them enough, and know that things are going to change and be very different for next time.

I feel bad for anyone who talked to me after the show. At that point I hadn't slept in 3 days (or showered) I didn't make any sense at all, and I probably stunk! Haha! Oh, lesson learned my friends. ;)Photos ©Wire and Getty Images.


Here is a link to more (but not all) looks from the show:
http://www.coutorture.com/New-York-Fashion-Week-Leanne-Marshall-Fall-2010-7403123