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The afternoon sun was pouring its warming rays through the living room windows, and I was curled up like a big lazy cat on the couch taking a nice New Year's nap, when.....RING.....RING.....my Wonderful Web Designer called to remind me that my January newsletter was not done!!!!! So..........
Happy New Year, one and all!!!!! May it bring each and every one of us...and everyone else too, all of the goodness that we need to live happy and healthy lives!
Siga and I are looking forward to a year of introducing some new designers to the store, and some new looks from our favorite ones.......
Since we are always on the look out for great casual clothes, we were very happy to see Staley Gretzinger's BREAD collection offering us some easy going cotton knit pieces with fresh novelty details. I think this is the first time that we have actually bought every single style in a collection because we like it so much!!! Since we do like to have things that can be worn immediately, we brought the group in black with white stitching and colored flower trims. (We do have a white tank top to go with the black jacket and bottoms so that you can wear it through a very long season.) We are showing you a few outfits that we have put together. There are several combinations that work equally well, and there are some additional pieces that are not shown. It seems that everybody goes away for a holiday vacation, so we do not have any sketches...sorry! If you are a Staley Gretzinger fan, this is a group you will not want to miss!!!!!
When we were in New York in September, we were riding up in the elevator of one of the show hotels with a woman wearing a great-looking jacket. We always talk to somebody who is wearing something we like.....and here is that great-looking jacket from Treadle in both a cropped and a fingertip length! I had to hide these upstairs in the stockroom because people were wanting to try them on before they even came out of the box.....
Catherine Bacon has designed pieces for her spring collection that we absolutely adore!!!!! They look so completely different from anything else that we have ever had from her!!!!!!!!!!! We just went and bought everything we loved.....a couple of pieces of this and a piece of that.....because we love the idea that they can be put together with whatever you want, casual or fancy. Each piece has something different to offer with Catherine's exquisite touch of paint or stitching or pleating or specially created trims (such as those fabulous flowers on the bottom of the black taffeta skirt). These are so pretty they take your breath away!!!!!
....and speaking of pretty, how beautiful are Giselle Shepatin's new sweaters??? Each piece is a one-of-a-kind random knit stripe in shades and textures of reds, blacks, browns, grays, or purples. We are showing a couple of them with Blanque pants to show you how much they can add to and change some of the pieces that you already have....and, of course, there are always jeans...........
Our new Blanque pieces are just that...NEW! We have the new Marbella Pant with buttons on the leg, a new Double-Zip Dress, and two new shirts, one that can be half-belted through the back!!! All of these new styles are in our best-selling black crepe fabric.....We also still have a great selection of different styles in cardinal red and peacock blue.....
Our new Anya jacket also came to us as a wear-in. Clever she is, always wearing her newest designs! This brick and charcoal jacket is an easy wrap style and loves to be paired with one of Ruth Spencer's felted silk/wool scarves!!!
The other thing that I am pretty excited about, although we had nothing to photograph at the time we took the rest of these shots, is Marsha Theis's collection of one-of-a-kind vests made from recycled sweaters. We get one or two a week, and they are always a surprise depending on what goodies she dug up at the Goodwill Store!! They might be wild and colorful with zippers, hooks, and buttons.....or they might be cleverly detailed neutrals based on an old man's patch elbow sweater.....They never stay around for more than a day or two, so be sure to ask to see them!!!
When Lauri Chambers walks into our store, EVERYBODY notices!!!!! She and her friend are always wearing one of her sophisticatedly zany felted wool hats. She told us that she is taking the next year off, so she was nice enough to let Siga and me come over to her hotel on a Friday night, where we got to choose our favorites from about 200 pieces that she dragged down from her room in three humongous boxes. We have ten of her fabulous creations........only because, thankfully, Siga had parked in a tow-away zone, which allowed me to put about fifteen of them back!!! We really...REALLY love these hats!!!!!!
AND.....last but not least, but not wearable.....we have some great new dolls from Olive Rose!!! Our Halloween witches all flew away, and now we have a whole new collection for spring. Each doll is (obviously) lovingly hand made and has a vintage feel....and it is really hard not to want to take them all home!!!!!!!!!!!
We are really excited about the coming year and the new things that it will bring. We will be sprucing the store up through the season.....first with new paint and the (holy terrors!!!!) new carpet. My friend Jocelyn has already brought us some carpet samples to try out....she has such great taste and design sense that number 1 will probably be the only one we even have to look at. We will, of course, be open through all of this, so it will be interesting!!!!!
We are looking forward to seeing you.....and meeting some of you (finally) for the first time.......
love you....
kati
415.362.3437
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