spring cleaning & rolling, rolling, rolling!

My idea of cleaning?  Throwing things away.  That's what my friend, Lorisa says.  But in this case, a bit of tossing, a bit of selling samples & old styles to open up space & possibilities for newness.  I love working with Sisongfa.  Just call her "Sis".  She makes me laugh as we work and helped me organize and tidy up the storage space we have downtown.  Over the past couple of weeks, we have been tackling a 10 by 10 storage space and reviewing 5 years worth of patterns, samples, and fabric.  Toss, keep, toss, revise.  Some styles & patterns needed to be completely eliminated.  Some... simply updated.  And others, to take a rest until the style or trend of the design comes back around.  Yesterday we laughed as we transported fabric from my cutter to the storage space.  We walked with this big fabric rack a few blocks down Broadway in downtown LA, past the new Ace Hotel, past the new Urban Outfitters, and up a freight elevator to deliver the goodies to storage.  Living the glamorous life!  XO, M.E.

collage o rama.

I'm still brainstorming Spring 2010 and thinking of new, fun styles for the season. Here are more pages from my collage book. Simple. Take a black bound sketchbook ... magazines, photos, paper pieces that inspire you.


Add scissors, a glue stick, and go! I have 10+ full collage books that I have done over the years. I refer to them for not only my designs, but color inspiration for my apartment, design ideas for the interior of the store, and so much more. It's easy, fun, therapeutic, a bit messy, but totally worth the time and effort. For more collage inspiration, check out Tavi's Blog. She adds a colorful background before laying the images down which adds a magical layer to her pieces. Enjoy. XO, M.E.

Just when I started taking fashion seriously...

Today's been a day of planning the 2010 collection for the boutique. That entails reviewing this season's best sellers, going through piles of magazines, photos I have taken, vintage goodies that I have found, listening to Jason Bentley on KCRW, and plenty of visits to style.com. So I am getting inspiration and decide to check out Vivienne Westwood's Spring 2010 collection. She's a ton of fun and seems to take this whole fashion thing with a grain of salt. I laughed out loud when I saw this photo on style.com today. XO, M.E.