Designs On You
Local Fashion Pros Talk About Making It Big Right Here at Home

By Emily Heil
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, December 10, 2006

Sure, Washington has had its share of fashionable moments. Think of Jackie Kennedy's tenure as first lady, or the days when former Georgetown doyenne Deeda Blair would show up impeccably turned out in the pages of Vogue. Fast-forward a few decades, and you have women such as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice cutting a surprisingly edgy figure in commanding coats and tall black boots.

But for the most part, the District is not known for being on the sartorial cutting edge. The reason is simple: "There's just not as large a creative community" here as in some other cities, says "Project Runway" star Tim Gunn, a native Washingtonian who now is the chair of fashion design at Parsons the New School for Design. "But the wonderful thing about the way the world is changing is that we can be anywhere and do what we need to do." Gunn maintains that designers should have some fashion connections in New York, but says they don't have to live there to be successful.

A glimpse at the District's design scene, where a community of designers is turning out some very worldly wares, shows there's great opportunity for success right here. Indie boutiques are popping up in neighborhoods from Silver Spring to Shaw, giving local designers an outlet to hawk their products, and offering shoppers a stylish alternative to cookie-cutter department-store brands.

Liberty Jones, whose Foggy Bottom boutique Alex stocks no shortage of designs from local and international talents, says her customers are looking for unique pieces. "The interest in wearing local is growing," she said. "I used to have trunk shows and maybe five people would come, but now I can have fashion shows with all local designers."

We found six area designers whose wares could hold their own against any city's. Together, they produce everything from sculptural handbags to vintage-inspired baubles to groovy screen-printed tees. Each has carved out his or her own niche, and they're all doing it close to home. To find out more about them, turn to Page M4.

Danielle Insetta, 31, Bethesda

What: Sixties fashion icon Penelope Tree would look perfectly at home in the candy-colored necklaces, bracelets and earrings Insetta crafts for her label, Circasixtythree.

Inspiration: The colors and shapes of vintage Lucite dictate her designs, says Insetta, who will become smitten with a particular specimen from her trove of nearly 1,000 pounds of beads, then tinker around with combinations to highlight it. "I like sticking to the aesthetic of the era," she says of her 1960s materials. "And I really like crazy color combinations."

How She Did It: When Insetta came across a box of vintage plastic beads at a Parisian flea market last year, she decided to trade a career in finance for one in design. Upon returning to the States, Insetta took a few Corcoran jewelry design classes and launched her label. Now she's turning out about 50 pieces a week and selling to local boutiques as well as French and Japanese department stores.

Advice: Insetta relies on networking through the Internet and through friends to team up with other young creative types: She met the graphic artist who designed her sales materials on MySpace and recruited the barista at her neighborhood Caribou Coffee to model her work.

"Working with people who are just starting out, too, is great," she says. "They're often less expensive, and they're really ambitious."

Signature Style: A navel-grazing necklace of vintage Lucite hoops and brassy gold plate, left, typifies Insetta's aesthetic: vibrant hues, chunky lines and a mod sensibility. $98 at Lettie Gooch, 1911 Ninth St. NW. 202-332-4242, http://www.lettiegooch.com/ or http://www.circasixtythree.com/.

Jennifer Lagdameo, 36, Rockville

What: Ananas, her line of luxe leather handbags and belts, strikes the balance between urban and earthy.

Inspiration: Travels in Asia and a previous stint working at the Smithsonian's Sackler Gallery infuse Lagdameo's designs with a global feel. Inspiration usually hits while traveling, she says, and she keeps a sketchbook on hand to capture it. "I practically spent high school in thrift stores," she says. "So I'm very influenced by the vintage look, too."

How She Did It: Lagdameo started designing accessories from indigenous materials while living in Manila. She began studying design, learning from her husband's aunt, who had a dressmaking shop in the Philippines, and by ripping up old handbags to examine how they were made. In 2003, she put out her first collection of bags. Hitting trade shows in New York and developing relationships with buyers for stores have paid off: Retailers such as Anthropologie and Bloomingdale's have scooped up her designs, and for this fall's collection, she made her biggest delivery yet, of about 1,000 bags.

Advice: Stay true to what you do well, Lagdameo advises. As her business has grown, it could be tempting to branch out. "But I don't want to overextend myself," she says. "Shoes are just my hobby," she says, referring to her favorite shopping indulgence. So don't expect Ananas mules anytime soon.

Signature Style: The Emily leather bag, above, is one of Lagdameo's most popular. Its sleek geometric lines are softened by the organic feel of the polished wooden hardware. $375 at Muleh, 1831 14th St. NW, 202-667-3440, http://www.muleh.com/ or http://www.ananascollection.com/.

Kevin Sherry, 24, Baltimore

What: He's the artist behind the cartoonish squids and stags that slither and clop across the silkscreened Ts, totes and shoes of Baltimore company Squidfire.

Inspiration: Sherry's background as a comic book illustrator is evident in his quirky designs. Before he starts drawing, he says he rifles through his vast library, which includes old eighth-grade science textbooks, back issues of Zoobooks magazine and art books by illustrators such as Shel Silverstein and Quentin Blake.

How He Did It: Sherry had planned to land in New York after graduating from art school. But after contemplating the life of a struggling artist, he hatched a plan with his business partner, Jean-Baptiste Regnard, to merge commerce and art. "Instead of having to work 40 hours a week just to pay the rent on a crappy studio apartment in New York and save money to start a business, I realized I could stay put and get where I needed to be successful," he says. By living in Baltimore, where rents are artist-friendlier, they could secure a combination warehouse/studio space and buy the equipment they needed to turn out silkscreened T-shirts featuring Sherry's artwork. Today, they're selling to stores such as Up Against the Wall and Commander Salamander as well as smaller boutiques across the country.

Advice: Sherry says teaming up with a business-savvy partner makes sense for designers who aren't right-side-of-the-brain types. Regnard had experience in real estate, which helped the duo find the right space for the company. He also did lots of market research, Sherry says, freeing him to focus on his designs. "A lot of artists just don't have the business skills they'd need to be successful," he says. Thanks to the duo's combined prowess, Sherry says they plan to turn a profit for the first time this year.

Signature Style: A T-shirt depicting a cockfight between two fierce-but-still-cartoonish birds is very Sherry, while his offbeat rendering turns a formula for cute (a bunny-printed baby onesie) into a wry statement. Shirt, $25; onesie, $15. Both at left. Similar styles available at the American Visionary Art Museum, 800 Key Hwy., Baltimore. 410-244-1900, http://www.avam.org/ or http://www.squidfire.com/.

Mojee Shokri, 28, McLean

What: Mojee Designs turns out fancy (but not fussy) necklaces, bracelets and earrings fashioned from bold 18-karat gold and semi-precious stones.

Inspiration: Each piece is one of a kind, and many of them are designed for a particular client, Shokri says, which means she has a different muse for each. "I try to feel the style and fashion inside [my client], and I make something just for her," she says of her customers, who include both the Washington society set and their fashion-forward daughters.

How She Did It: The native of Iran hit on jewelry design more than seven years ago through a designer friend. It combined her artistic streak (she had dabbled in painting) with a desire to run her own business. "My father owned a factory and always taught me to try not to work for other people," she recalls. Now she goes on buying trips to Iran every few months for stones and gold, and does most of the fabrication in her basement studio.

Advice: A designer just starting out has to knock on doors -- literally, Shokri says. When she began, she homed in on the Keith Lippert Gallery in Georgetown, known for its collection of high-end but unstuffy jewelry, as a perfect venue for her pieces. "I loved the store, and so one day I just showed up with my things," she says. Now, the gallery regularly sells out of her work.

Signature Style: Shokri's statement-y tassel necklace, above, features moonstones, faceted citrines and mixed-metal accents. $1,980 at Keith Lippert Gallery, 2922 M St. NW, 202-965-9736.

Leann Trowbridge, 33, Washington

What: When she's not selling 1960s and '70s threads as a co-owner of Meeps Vintage Fashionette, Trowbridge also designs vintage-inspired clothing for women, from disco-ready jersey frocks to fitted jackets in geometric prints.

Inspiration: Her shop's constantly shifting inventory provides Trowbridge with an endless wellspring of ideas, she says, as does her own stash of vintage patterns (a couple hundred, at last count) and fabrics, such as colorful barkcloth or Cerruti silk. "I start with something I'd like to wear myself, and, as I'm designing and tweaking it, I can give it a test drive," she says.

How She Did It: Trowbridge began sewing as a youngster to stock her closet with "cool" clothes when her parents refused to take her to the mall. "I started sewing out of sheer necessity," she says. After studying biology at George Washington University, Trowbridge stayed on in Washington, sewing costumes for musician friends and taking a job at Betty, the now-defunct Adams Morgan boutique. There, she designed for the house label and met co-worker Danni Sharkey, who would become her partner at Meeps.

Advice: Learn to sew; it gives you a sense of how clothing is constructed and which fabrics work with which designs, Trowbridge says. "If that's something you're not interested in, maybe you should be in some other aspect of fashion, like marketing or as a stylist."

Signature Style: One of her most popular designs has been the Variety dress, shown above at left, a convertible jersey piece that can be worn as a dress, a skirt, or a top, depending on how it's draped. $58 at Meeps Vintage Fashionette, 2104 18th St. NW, 202-265-6546, http://www.meepsdc.com/.

Rakiyt Zakari, 24, Arlington

What: Multi-culti characters grace cotton T-shirts from Zakari's The Original David label, while her eponymous Rakiyt Zakari womenswear label features funky-yet-pretty dresses, faux-fur tufted vests and drapey tops.

Inspiration: The designer's pieces are infused with an eclectic sensibility that mirrors her own personal style: Zakari (whose mother is from Virginia and father from Nigeria) has wide-ranging tastes, and she says she has drawn design inspiration from Russian folk music and the Beatles. Yet she also has made a study of her Gen Y clientele. "They like the street look, but it has to look intelligent," she says. "They mix thrift store with pricey stuff -- I keep that in mind." So she designs funky T-shirts that can be worn under suits and elegant frocks that can be paired with motorcycle boots.

How She Did It: Zakari started peddling her designs to local boutiques while still a fashion-merchandising undergrad at Howard. After graduating in 2003, she did a stint in London's Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and started selling her designs full time the following year. She produces four womenswear collections a year and sells an average of 140 T-shirts a month, she says. Zakari is working on taking her homegrown business "out of the kitchen," as she puts it, recently hiring a sales rep.

Advice: Although many young designers are tempted to bolt for the bright lights of New York, Zakari says Washington is a great place to build a company and a name. "You could just get eaten alive," she cautions of jumping to American fashion's big pond too soon. Here, she says, the smaller fashion scene allows her to refine her designs and learn the ropes of being a business owner before she makes an eventual move to New York or possibly overseas. "I want to have my company solid [first]," she says.

Signature Style: With dressmaker details such as a bubble hem, obi sash and jersey shoulder ties, Zakari's little black dress, above, is anything but basic. The custom piece is $230, available to order through Alex Boutique, 1919 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, 202-296-2610, http://www.alexboutiquedc.com/.