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 Leave it to FAO Schwarz, purveyor of the 22-foot long piano and the $9,000 rocking horse , to market the couture experience to the grammar-school set. The cost for such an endeavor is $800, but the experience is, as they say, priceless. Proof can be found in the note of gratitude a young designer named Gianna Pignetti sent to Liz Geier, resident coutourier of FAO's Imagine This Design Showcase, after she received her self-designed silk charmeuse dress with matching beaded shrug. The 11-year-old's message included seven thank yous, 56 exclamation marks and one closing smiley face. A satisfied customer, indeed.
FAO's kiddie couture was introduced last year, along with the revival of the 143-year-old toy chain. (In 2003, FAO filed for Chapter 11 and closed all it's stores, but the New York and Las Vegas outposts reopened in late 2004.) Geier launched Imagine This on her own three years ago, creating clothed based on children's drawings. It wasn't until she approached the high end specialty store as a possible vendor that the project became, as she puts it, "a marketable item. Before, it was basically custom-design, like people do with adults," says Geier, who previously worked in custom bridal design.
What the collaboration with FAO yielded was a designer kit that has all the makings for easy-bake couture: a big silver box encrusted with rhinestones and wrapped in a pink satin ribbon. "What I wanted was something to put under the tree or to give someone for [his or her] birthday?" says Kim Richmond, executive vice president of marketing for FAO.
Inside the bejeweled box, tools include colored pencils, oil pastels, a measuring tape, sketchbook and swatchbook. "It's just to let kids know what the fabrics are," Geier says of the latter. "As you can imagine, charmeuse and chiffon are two of the really popular ones. The wool gabardine, although it's in here, we don't see much."
Once she receives the original designs, Geier must decipher what often amounts to little more than multicolored scribbles and exaggerated shapes and forms. (FAO bills the buy as "recommended for ages 3 and up.") Take, for example, the drawings of asymmetric hems. "You don't know if that's just the kid's coordination or not," says Geier, which explains why she holds plenty of phone consultations and e-mail exchanges with the young designers. But so far, the Manhattan native has been lucky in her dealings with the underaged. She notes, "There hasn't been an obnoxious one yet," you know, the Eloise-on-fire type.
"Children have a remarkable design ability," Geier continues. "They don't have the hand-eye coordination, they don't have the motor skills to do great sketches necessarily, but what they can dream up is remarkable. What's interesting is how seriously they take it." To wit: Although Imagine This doesn't have the capabilities for footwear, 12-year-old Olivia Dockerty's drawing nevertheless included shoes to match her dress because, as she says, "it would really mean something to me and it would pull my spring-summer look together."
- Venessa Lau |
 
Custom Couture by Imagine This
From: FAO Schwarz
Cost: $800
A $1,083
Can $935
? 679
£ 464
Rs 36,850
Forbes.com
With the recent popularity of Heidi Klum's reality TV show Project Runway, designers-in-training have sprung up across the country. This kit provides the budding fashionista in your family everything she or he needs to create the garment of their dreams. Custom Couture is a ready-made package full of the tools necessary to start sewing; and once the recipient settles on a pattern and style, she or he pairs up with an established Manhattan designer to physically make the item--complete with a customized label, created and designed by the recipient.
For more information, visit http://www.faoschwarz.com/
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Couture for the Pint Size
By SUSAN GUERRERO
Published: November 7, 2004
For some children,off the the rack simply will not do. Wish List, in Greenwich and Westport, Conn., offers budding fashionistas the chance to create the dress of their dreams, in sizes ranging from bat mitzvah girl to prom queen. "We make them feel as feminine and as sexy as their mothers will allow them to be, sophisticated," said Suzanne Zarilli, an owner of the shops. Pint-size couture dresses run from $300 to $1,400; for information, www.wishlistgirl.com. FAO Schwarz is inviting girls 3 and up to design a "personal fantasy dress" (an example, right). Its Imagine This kit, $800, includes art supplies, swatches, telephone consultation with a couturier and, of course, the dress; (800) 426-8697. And the original customizers, grandmothers, must now go up against Sam Little, a new line of bespoke sweaters for boys and girls. Hand-knit in Scotland in a dozen styles, the soft wool sweaters come in rich nontraditional colors like slate, henna and citrus, and can be trimmed in a contrasting color (left); $168 to $248 to order from Best & Company in Greenwich, (203) 629-1743, and at Bergdorf Goodman in New York.
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A Pattern For Success
LOS ANGELES June 6.2003
(CBS The Early Show)
When kids are allowed to dress themselves, even in clothes in their parents bought, they can come up with some pretty outrageous combinations. So why would anyone think it's a good idea to let them create their own clothing? Because, to paraphrase Ralph Lauren, it's not about designing clothes, it's about designing dreams. They're the trendsetters of the world: Calvin Klein, Donna Karen, and now Tristan Friedman? Eight-year-old, Tristan is turning her colored drawings into kiddie couture. Showing her drawing, she says, "On the lower portion, it's going to be a big poufy dress, and there's going to be neon pink, a neon red, and a light blue. " She is doing it with the help of a company called "Imagine This" and it's creator, Liz Geier.
Geier explains, Imagine This is a way to enable children to design their own one-of-a-kind outfits. "A lot of little girls just do it as a doodling thing, draw pictures of what they want to wear, princess dresses or anything they'd like to wear, so I take those pictures and turn them into patterns."
The task isn't always easy. "Especially with really small kids, the drawings, sometimes you wouldn't even know that the picture is supposed to be of a dress, " says Geier. "It's almost like working with a police sketch artist, you know, that kind of thing where a person can't draw a picture of somebody, but if they can describe it to a person who can draw, they can get it. So what we end up with is a clearer version of what they already see in their mind, which is very cool."
While any kind of kid can become a client, this haute couture has a haute price, starting at $***.** For that Geier personally sews each outfit at her home in L.A. and works one on one with clients like Tristan, making sure their orignal designs are made precisely how they're envisioned. But with the combinations that kids come up with, one wonders why would you want to give them license to design their own clothes. Geier says, "The things that they design are really unusual. They're the kinds of things that get commented on a lot. When people see them they say, 'Oh my God, what a great dress!'"
Comments that veteren child designers like Edith Young, Olivia Anacon, and Stephanie Leckich hope for. Stephanie says she wanted to make a different kind of jeans and start a new trend. So what did others say about her design? Stephanie says, "Well I went to my fifth grade social with it, and everyone, they were pretty impressed."
And as for the impressive price tag, Stephanie's Mom says it's worth it. She says, "It's so exciting, I had such low expectations of her drawing, quite frankly, and when we told her that she had this opportunity, she sat down, she knew exactly what she wanted. It was fascinating to see what she produced." And Tristan's Mom feels the same way. She says, "That's a nice thing, I think, for young kids to have a sense of pride in what they do and be able to show it off."
Does your kid want to be a designer?
CBS Early Show: Check us out on the CBS web site!
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Copyright The Times Mirror Company;
 Los Angeles Times 2003. All rights reserved.
STYLE & CULTURE: A kid's eye for fly; Eye-popping originality is the signature of Imagine This ..., a Valley Glen firm that takes a child's drawing and turns it into a one-of-a-kind fashion statement.
The Los Angeles Times; Los Angeles, Calif.; Jan 6, 2003; Kathleen Kelleher
When Lucia McGloin was 5 1/2, she was already creating pictures of girls' clothes, rendering with crayon on paper a stunning array of colors, whimsical patterns and styles. The drawings were so fresh that Lucia's grandmother, M.A. Leede, urged Lucia's mother to find someone who could bring the designs to life.
Enter Liz Geier, a clothing maker, who worked with Lucia to translate one of her original drawings into a cotton jersey dress with a yin-yang symbol on its midsection and tailored to fit the little girl.
That was nearly two years ago, and the experience was so rewarding, the actual dress so true to the details of Lucia's drawing, that the girl's mother commissioned Geier to create a whole wardrobe for her daughter based on her designs.
For Geier, the experience was the inspiration for Imagine This ... , a fledgling company based in Valley Glen that officially launched last month. The company is owned and run by Geier, who meticulously works children's drawings of clothes into couture, complete with a child's own individual signature label.
"Initially, when I went over those drawings with Lucia, I realized there was a great sense of composition and great color combinations in her drawings," said Geier, 38, who has worked as a freelance couturier and designer over the years and whose house doubles as her studio. "What I realized was her drawings were pure creativity."
Take the teal-colored polar fleece coat that Lucia designed with sleeves and collar trimmed in red faux fur. Red cording is sewn down the vertical length of the sleeve and the coat is lined in white rayon with thin dark-blue and red vertical stripes. Or the pink halter top embroidered with lavender cord in the shape of an "S" and matching capri pants with a saw-toothed hem.
As one might imagine, creating one-of-a-kind clothes designed by children is a labor-intensive process. First, children and parents fill out questionnaires about style, fabrics and values. (For the child: "What adjectives best describe your style and taste?" "Are you allergic to any fabrics?" For parents: "Are there any style lines or features you do not want, i.e. visible belly button, spaghetti straps, mini-skirts, etc.?") Geier also asks where an outfit might be worn ("school," "a birthday party," "the Academy Awards or royal coronation"). If her client lives in Los Angeles, Geier will personally meet with the child to take measurements. After working on the design, Geier returns it to the child to make sure she has understood the child's vision. She shops for fabrics and sends swatches back and forth until a final decision is made.
Sometimes, the details or ornamentation that a child imagines don't exist, and Geier is forced to make them -- an enormous triangular jeweled button for one outfit; a three-tiered green leather Christmas tree purse edged in rhinestones for 9-year-old Edith Young of Chappaqua, N.Y.; and even a pair of rubber-soled high- top shoes, for 5-year-old Isabela Minogue of Hidden Hills.
All of which is why prices generally start at $*** per outfit, not exactly the Target demographic. So far, Geier, who grew up in Greenwich Village and learned to sew on her grandmother's 1930 Singer, has about 15 paying clients in the United States and Europe. Business is generated mostly by word of mouth and through her Web site (www.imaginethiscouture.com).
While Geier concedes that the price is prohibitive for most people, her clients -- both children and their parents -- proclaim that the collaborative experience is as much a reward as the clothes themselves. "It is really great for creative minds," says Claudia Leede, 10, who lives in Austin, Texas, and is Lucia McGloin's cousin. "Designing your own clothes kind of stretches your imagination. It is really fun when you get your outfits and you can wear them everywhere. When I did cow print pants with a shirt and hat, Liz put the spots exactly where I had them in my drawing." Claudia has designed her own line of stretchy clothes that work well with her kinetic lifestyle and which she refers to as her "Grab n' Go" line. The clothes -- tank tops, T-shirts, capris and pants -- are made of Lycra in fanciful patterns with eye-popping fluorescent colors.
"They are stretchy, and you can roll them up really tiny," said Claudia, who is a dancer, and thus far a prolific designer, with a 54-piece clothing line bearing her label, Moo Cow Designs.
Lucia's mother, Katie McGloin, said that, for a child, seeing a drawing evolve from her imagination to paper to a piece of clothing is a powerful learning experience. "It is really a privilege to give this to your child, and obviously, not everyone can afford to do something like this, but Lucia has learned so much," said McGloin, an interior designer who lives in Santa Monica. "Each piece of clothing is really a work of art, and the quality of workmanship is just incredible. Making a child's dream visible is a profound experience for them."
Geier has just finished a peach silk kimono lined in purple silk jacquard with pockets, buttons and a collar edged in black silk charmeuse for a 9-year-old. "A lot of the things that I do, I have never seen ... until I see it in one of the kids' designs," said Geier. "Adult designs are always going to be derivative. With kids, it is always bizarre or unique."
Would she consider offering the same service for grown-ups? Geier responded: "Only if they can draw in crayon."
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The Staten Island Advance
March 2007
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___________________________________________________________________________________________ click link below:
Imagine This Couture page on FAO Schwarz.com |
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