Boutique (322)
It's a little puzzling, given the immense popularity of knit fabrics in fashion today, why knit prints are relatively hard to find. Premier fabric designers like Robert Kauffman (pictured), Amy Butler, and Michael Miller all seem to design prints produced exclusively as woven fabrics.Is this because their target market is primarily quilters? Today, with the emergence of so much patchwork in boutique apparel, there would seem to be a growing market for designer knit prints.
At this point, Pixyworl
But I had to laugh when my husband, while building the link directory for his men's watches site, received a request to link to a page called Pimp Costumes! I am not making this up.
That is one
Gymboree (hairpiece pictured) is clearly a leader in mass-produced hair accessories for little girls. There are also many clever moms producing unique custom hair pieces, selling on etsy or eBay. So, is there room for more?Gymboree seems to have two advantages, besides the obvious cost benefit of mass-production. One is one-stop shopping. Moms shopping online will choose a hairpiece from the same site as the clothing they are buying, if possible, to save on shipping.
Their other advantage is outf
Not too long ago, we were hearing from the fashion world that Pink Is the New Black. But the faddish popularity of the color seems to be fading. The best-selling collection in my toddler girls' boutique line this season has been Flower Power, my only collection without even a hint of pink.Maybe we are sick of pink because, in this economy, Pink Slips are the New Black! Maybe moms shopping little girls' boutiques are looking for something very unique, and they feel that pink for little girls is t
Even for women's clothing, I've found significant variation between brands. But in the children's clothing I buy, sizing is all over the map!!
In shopping for my boys (aged 7 and 9) I've found that the smaller brands tend to run on the smaller side. Gap Kids is long in the legs, good in the arm le
After all, I have a science background and two little girls to try out all my products on... and have already produced some cool products they love to use.
Bad News: Suppose I wanted to start with a test run of 100 units of product. I've investigated bare-bones packaging costs, and for this quantity they soar to $2.50 plus per unit. (See Labels Stickers and More and Midwest Bottles.) Multiply by 2 to get wholesale cost, 2 again
When I did my first manufacturing run for Pixyworld last year, I tried to choose colors that would appeal not just to me personally, but to a wide range of customer tastes. For example, I had learned, through selling custom outfits on eBay, that in toddler girls' clothes, pink just sells. As an Autumn, I can't wear pink at all, so it's not a color I naturally gravitate to. (Though it looks gorgeous on my little Summery 4-year-old!)
At any rate, I had to let myself go on just one collection. For F
While doing the webmastering for Boutique Baby Toddler & Little Girls' Clothes by Pixyworld, I have joined quite a few of them. They are, of course, a free inbound link to my site. Hopefully they are also a little bit of advertising, allowing visitors to see a banner and description of my site.
But here's the catch: My theory is that you pretty much have to be on page one for your link to be found by google; also, you have to be on page one for y
I might say the same for my design studio, the wellspring of Pixyworld children's fashion, should it ever be accused of being... shall we say, less than tidy? I had to admit to finding a large piece of unused marker paper the other day, after having made do without any (thinking I'd run out) for several days of pattern making.
But I like to class myself as "artistic" (as if that somehow
The ability to put images on clothing has opened up new vistas of fun and personal expression, both for adults and children. Printed fabrics and printed tee-shirts are so ubiquitous now that we take them for granted. But my favorites, especially for children's clothing, are embroidery and applique -- two methods that give an image a special texture and style that really makes it pop.
Embroidery Library has great examples of both. With embroidery, there is the possibility for almost limitless deta
However, we've been getting more and more wholesale inquiries, and it's caused us to take another look at the potential
Jackson's color theory forms a foundation for color selection in fashion design. It reminds the designer to select colors from all four seasons, so that her line can have the broa
When Pixyworld puts out our next jeans collection, what cut will make the cut?? According to MiniHipster.com, the skinny jean is here to stay. I have to say, when a company like BabyGap is selling them at full price, the prognosis does look good.The tricky part is that right now we seem to be between trends, as evidenced by the plethora of choices available there. There's wide leg, straight, & boot cut; embroidered, whiskered, and appliqued.
Or, one could interpret it differently: perhaps we are
Pixyworld doesn't exactly have a huge advertising budget these days. It's basically sweat-it-out, knock on zillions of e-doors, and hope somebody puts up my link somewhere.
I do have a very nice reciprocal link directory, by the way, in case you're
The question is, how to direct the shopping impulse toward something easy on -- or not too catastrophic to -- the credit card balance! And that's where it comes in so handy being a clothing designer.
When I need to shop, I can browse fabrics for my next Pixyworld collection. And if the urge is strong upon me, I can even request swatches.
Swatches are one of life's few free pleasures. When they arrive in the mail, it's
I've picked up a smattering of HTML along the way, thanks to some great online tutorials, including htmlcodetutorial.com. (Who writes these things, anyway??) And I've also had to enter the mysterious world of Reciprocal Linking and Top Sites List
It's not hard to see the logic behind Pixyworld doing a collection called Pixy Friends. There's something irresistible about the idea of magical people, when children are concerned.My inspirations for this collection, besides my own little pixies, were C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia and Johhny Gruelle's Raggedy Ann & Andy stories. My own children love these stories, wanting them read aloud, and then reading them on their own as soon as they are old enough.
I fell in love with the fairy embr
Any local mini-models sized 18M to 5T who are inte
But if I had to pick one detail that is make or break, it's fit. And I'd say that with the childrens' clothes I design, sizing is even more challenging, but just as important.
It's more challenging because children vary tremendously in both height and weight, whereas in standard adult women's
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