Stacia on Cover of Health Magazine

Yippee! Our first cover! Check out Health Magazine's November issue and see our Stacia Bungalow hoodie gracing the cover. The model looks fabulous with her turquoise blue eyes, dark hair, and our Surf hoodie. The bad news is we're already sold out of this aqua color, but the good news is we have this ribbed hoodie available in other beachy colors and it's on sale! And to top it off, we're currently running a Free Shipping promo for a limited time. So check out the cover and grab one of these yummy hoodies for yourself before they sell out completely!

Road Trip - Portland, Oregon

Baby Kai and I jetted up to Portland to visit an old high school friend for a girl's weekend. I was craving a little 'girl time' - shopping, eating, and no boys allowed! Portland, rain and all, is a fun little city. My favorite walkable neighborhood, The Pearl, reminded me of Brooklyn's Dumbo - cool warehousey buildings converted to lofts, art galleries, bistros, and chic boutiques. For low-light, sophisticated dining, we enjoyed dinner at the Latin restaurant, Oba, in the Pearl district, where I ravished my butternut squash enchiladas and cheese-dip nachos -yummmm! Snatched up some cute duds and Pippy-long stocking tights for Kai at Hanna Andersson's organic cotton kids boutique (my friend calls it Hannah Montana!) And all Portland tourists should check out the famous Powell's bookstore - the huge emporium of new and used books galore (snagged some out of print Sesame Streets for Campbell!) On my list was to scout out the retail scene for Stacia too. Checked out Hot Box Betty's Portland outpost on Broadway Street (we sell to their Bend boutique.) It's matchbox size store is stocked with a nice edited selection of clothes for men and women. And what do stylish women do in Portland with all the rain? Umbrellas are faux pas for sure. And unlike their sister city, Seattle, this town is less about Patagonia anoraks and more about sleek trenches and cute newsboy hats to stay dry. Fell in love with the jacquard newsboy hat at Hot Box Betty. If I lived where it actually rained, I'd be doning this hat for sure! Portland's NW district of Nob Hill was also a favorite. With Fall in full bloom and orange, gold, and red leafy trees lining the street, NW 23rd Street could have been mistaken for a street in Boston or Connecticut. And lastly, let's not forget the unforgettable cupcakes at Saint Cupcake on NW 17th Avenue- to die for!

Fashion For the Cure- "Think Pink & Green"

Last night was date night for me and my hubby, but rather than dinner and a movie, we opted to dress up in our finest and dash on down to 2 Rodeo Drive. Susan G. Komen's Los Angeles County chapter presented the Fashion for the Cure event on the lovely cobblestone streets of Rodeo Drive. With live music, yummy oysters and wine, and back-to-back fashion shows, it was just enough she-she yet all serious fun. The event was hosted by Mariel Hemmingway and featured green fashion from Deborah Lindquist and breast cancer survivors modeling eco-fashion from Stacia, Not Your Daughter's Jeans, Eco-Centric, MC 2, and SASH. There's nothing better than seeing real women looking fabulous (and comfortable!) in my designs and strutting their stuff down the runway. Women of all shapes, sizes, and age looking beautiful! I was so proud! Breast cancer awareness is a very personal cause for me having had my grandmother die of breast cancer in her 40's and a best friend diagnosed (twice!) in her mid 20's. Today, the awareness has helped women of all ages overcome the death sentence of breast cancer. Unlike my grandmother, who back in the 50's would not have known to have done a self exam, my best friend thankfully beat the cancer early (and now she is mother to a beautiful baby boy!) I was happy and honored to be asked to participate in this extraordinary event and to make just a few women feel like a million bucks for one night.

Cool Blog Alert

Check out Ravinstyle's new fashion blog, ravinstyle.blogspot.com! One of my favorite online retailers has launched into the blog-o-sphere. Now you can get up to date fashion filing from New York's uber cool fashionistas. Ravinstyle.com always stocks the latest and greatest clothes from designers on both coasts (and yours truly too!), plus the best selection of accessories (love the bags!) online. Ravinstyle's schtick is to cover the gammut of all a girl's personalities, whether she's minimal chic, bohemian edge, or flirty and feminine. The Ravinstyle gals are Jackie, Ravin, and Lela and each represents a style personality. Any real fashionista has a little of each of these style personalities within and it's nice to know you can one-stop shop for whichever mood you're in. Their latest post announces a chance to win a $500 shopping spree at ravinstyle.com when you sign up on their mailing list- cool deal!

It's Not All Catwalks, Caviar, and Champagne

Everyone thinks being a fashion designer is all about catwalks, caviar, champagne, and diva behavior. But in fact, it's all about problem solving, factory issues, and pick n' pack shipping. There's nothing glamorous about being a real designer or one that gets down on their knees to baste a hem or take trans-Atlantic calls with the Hong Kong factory at 11:00 at night. I wish I was sitting in a fabulous design studio overlooking the Champs-Elysees making delicate brush strokes on my illustrations and sipping cappuccino that my assistant fetched for me. Yeah, right! Unfortunately the reality is the craziness that goes on behind the scenes and all the production problems, bad checks, and bounced boxes. But I'm happy to say, that's where all the fun begins as a real designer. There's nothing more satisfying than tackling a problem and putting it to bed.

I recently had such a catastrophe that thankfully was diverted in less than 48 hours! One of my favorite dresses for Fall, the cuter than cute merino baby doll dress pictured above, came in with a major pressing problem. All 315 of these puppies came in with the empire waist gathers pressed open and flat which created the most unflattering bump at the high hip. But the most distressing part was I didn't discover the problem until I had shipped out 130 of them to my customers. Yikes! Thankfully, one of my loyal clients noticed the problem and notified me. There's nothing worse than the awful empty-pit feeling in the stomach when I proceeded to unpack a bunch of my production from Hong Kong to find these unsightly bumps. I was mortified! My favorite dress looked like hell. After a lengthy conversation with my overseas factory late at night, we concluded the problem resulted in the pressing stage at the factory and it was not a knitting or design problem. The end result being that I needed to pull all 130 dresses off the selling floor and quickly (literally in 24 hours) get these dresses repressed to perfection and reshipped. I had to schlep all 315 of these dresses to Gardena for repressing (boy, do I need an intern, and one with a car!).

Yeah, problem solved! Now all my stores have the correct dresses on the selling floor and I can sit back and know that they will sell themselves. So yes, being a designer can sometimes be glamorous (photo shoots, fashion shows, and publicity galore), but the real deal is getting through the bumps and hurdles that come with the job. You don't too often hear about the back-room catastrophes at Marc Jacobs or Chanel, but rest a sure, they do happen to all of us designers, big and small.

Little Designers in the Making