About

Most women in long-term relationships can attest to the ups, downs and sheer struggle of keeping intimacy alive in a fulfilling, exciting and inspiring way.

The same time that I discovered making nighties for myself, was also the time when I discovered loving as an art form, as a practice in relationship, not a by-product of it.

An eager student I dove deep into learning how to spark the sizzle in a long-term relationship, and I became an apprentice to the art of love. I am not interested in mediocre clothes nor am I interested in mediocre love. Perhaps it’s my latin blood, but I tend to enjoy things vividly, passionately, intensely.

The playful nature of dressing up and trying out different lingerie ideas became closely intertwined with my feminine journey.

Internal dialogues ensued, asking myself questions like 

• What does it mean to be feminine? 
• What is feminine power?
• What about masculinity attracts me? 
• What creates that erotic charge between a man and a woman? 
• What makes me feel beautiful and empowered and what disempowers me? 
• What can I do to improve our intimacy? 
• What role do I play in the dance of love?” 
• If I am going to spend the next 50 years together, I damn well want to be happy, so what are the keys to a happy union?

My nighties, this site, this business is all a tribute to that, 
to the feminine journey towards self-discovery, love and passionate union.

Part of that journey is about comfort, with ourselves, with our beloved, and with the objects and environment that contain us, like clothing. I had a devastating experience of comfort being pulled out from beneath me as a young child and came to understand how we can spend years limiting and cutting ourselves off from freedom of expression, from intimacy, and from our power when we lack the comfort in our bodies, in our clothes, in our environments and in our relationships.

The idea to make modest everyday nighties came directly through this craving for comfort. It came from the desire to send messages to him that tonight’s not the night without wearing stained, frayed and plain old ugly clothes. I wanted a comfortable natural garment that I still felt was elegant for myself, without feeling like a calling card for sex and not finding it anywhere (especially in natural fibers).

I have a strange quirky ‘talent’? Since I was a child you could lay out 10 different renditions of black velvet pants, 10 different diamond rings, 10 juicers, any spread of nearly identical objects, and without fail I always pick the one that is the most beautifully and quality made.

Last month I walked into a woman’s home for the first time, and there was one piece that stood out to me above everything else so I complimented her on it, and she said “You have good taste, that is a Tiffany lamp that I inherited.” This ‘talent’ is the reason why my garments are meticulous and have received a lot of praise from my mentors about the beauty, craftsmanship and quality. I always see and strive for the best.

I felt very insecure taking my first sewing class at age 31, but both my teachers and myself quickly realized the speed and depth at which I grasped the material. I was like a sponge, and like any toddler, I was very eager to ride my bike without training wheels. I dreamed of the day when my skills would reach the level of my ambition.

In freshman year of college I took an intensive drawing class that pushed me so hard I would cry, throw my board across the room, stay up 24 hours drawing nudes…the quintessential tortured artist. I wanted perfect execution of my vision so badly. But I was not the top student in my class. Not once. There was one girl who always performed better than me. Her technical skills surpassed mine, every single week throughout the entire year. And my teacher would give me the same feedback every week: “Very Ambitious”. My compositions were good, but my skills never achieved the level of my ambition.

So, when I took up sewing, pattern drafting, beading, embroidering, I took it up with a single goal in mind. My ambition hands down is Haute Couture (‘high sewing’). My dream and ambition was to meet my creative vision with the same level of skill and meticulousness that I admired. I felt scared and depressed that my youth had come and gone and I did not pursue my dreams, did not learn from the masters in Paris, that I was tied down to a place that boasted no particular fame and skill in textiles. The most I found locally in learning opportunity was how to felt your own scratchy wool vest and dye it brown with oak galls.

Far far from my vision.

I supplemented my local college classes with books and videos, and apprenticed with a local wedding gown alterationist who admired my hand-work skills. Eventually I had the good fortune to cross paths with a mentor who shares a passion and knowledge of couture sewing.

Just after meeting this woman, and at a heart-wrenching life junction, I decided I was ready to try my hand at making the most ambitious design in my sketchbook. If not now, when? I spent over a month trying out different construction methods, design ideas, etc. Two weeks alone were spent constructing and deconstructing the ‘ruffle’ in every possible way I could imagine a ruffle to be so that I could capture the exact styling of the ruffle I wanted on my piece.

I invented a new method to obtain the ‘perfect ruffle’ I was seeking without using plastic. I would not settle for mediocre. I would not accept another “ambitious” comment. I wanted it to be perfect, or nothing at all. I got to a stage where I realized that I needed someone else’s feedback and opinions. I had questions, technical ones about the best way to construct my vision.

I’ll never forget the day I brought my mannequin to meet the woman who would become my mentor. I did not show her a drawing, just my scrappy trial-and-error piece. I wasn’t trying to get her opinion on the full picture, just some pointed questions. But stepping back, it looked like I was a half-wit who could barely use a sewing machine. Because sewing takes so much time, I cut a lot of corners, used gawdy scrap fabrics, my seams were all over the place. I was just trying things out quickly like a three-dimensional charcoal sketch, not an oil painting.

The real vision was in my head and I could see it so clearly.

And I’ll always be grateful that she took me seriously. Though she had no clue what my skills were like nor my vision, she entertained me and gave genuine and valuable advice to my inquiries. She helped me reach my goal. That piece took 6 months. A single skirt. And I am so proud of that today. I receive a lot of compliments on my pieces, though I have only done a few, and I am excited to have my goals within reach, finally.

My visions are very textural and employ many mediums like painting, embroidery, lacework, ribbonwork, tatting, beadwork, etc, not to mention the original pattern development and fitting.

Each one of these techniques could be a lifetime career in itself to master them. I quickly realized that I cannot perfect every one of these trades in my lifetime, and I need to make some decisions about where to place my attentions.

Ultimately it is the design I want to convey, a story I want to tell, and I learn just what I need to know to get me by in the story, the vision I want to make. I am an expedient learner and train myself for each design in the techniques I need just for that piece.

Lace, for example, is very difficult to find in natural materials. The cotton options are clumsy, bulky and scarce. So, I learned enough tatting so that I could make lace buttonholes out of the finest cotton sewing thread, even organic cotton thread. Surely this is not the ideal method to learn an art, but it works for me and I enjoy it.

I do not want to be a seamstress sewing the same garment over and over again, some sweatshop in California. For this reason, all my pieces will be made as limited editions.

Above all, I love the handwork. Like a painter dipping his brush into his palette and pushing the paint at his discretion across the canvas, I feel a surge of joy and creative expression when I dip my needle into a pile of beads and pause for a moment to see just where they should land for the best composition of shape and color.

I love bringing a garment, a vision to life. I know enough rules to bend and break them, and what I don’t know I dive headfirst into learning and exploring. It is a blissful and deeply satisfying experience. After so much trial and error to arrive at the final piece, it seems a shame not to make more than one.

And at the same time, I don’t want to be imprisoned by that vision, like a rock star singing the same hit song on stages for 30 years. It grows old. I work more like a painter who finishes a piece, makes a few limited prints, and then on to the next vision.

Then there was one day that altered the course of my life. It was one of those pivotal moments when you look back and think ‘Everything would have been different, the people I met, the person I married, the values I hold, everything, if that one moment had been different.’

I was about 10 years old, in Manhattan celebrating my birthday with my aunt and uncle. I looked up to my uncle as an idol because he was living my dream. He was a fashion designer who manufactured and sold his goods across the country. Not only did he do what I wanted to do, he went from rags to millions doing it. So, I knew he would be a good person to share my dream with, someone who could understand…

I said to him one day, “Uncle Irv, I want to do fashion when I grow up”. He shocked me and rocked my world when he said, “Don’t do it”. He told me to pick another career, just not fashion. He told me it wasn’t a good business to be in. My child brain could not understand why, as a successful man of fashion, would he say this to me?

The deciding card was my trust in his advice, my belief that he must know what he is talking about. So, I set my heart’s compass to find what could be my passion if it wasn’t fashion.

Today, in retrospect, I understand where he was coming from, and the truth behind his words. His business after all was entangled with the NY mafia (That’s right, and I even dined in their ‘family’ restaurant on Coney Island, no joke). And, the fashion industry was as bad as Wall Street, thieves and cut-throats abound.

But I never found my place. I tried architecture, ceramics, painting, industrial design, jewelry making and interior design as alternatives and ended up swinging into textile design, basically getting as close as I could get to fashion without actually being in fashion. Until 20 years later I finally succumbed, and decided “To hell with that advice, this is what I want to do and hopefully it’s not too late.”

One day, I came across a book that tells the stories of the real hands and minds behind haute couture.

Though we are led to believe the exceptional talents of the runway lies in the minds of superstar individuals like Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel or Christian Dior, the truth is that most of those brands were built on the backs of creative geniuses and masters who still, to this day, don’t receive recognition. (In the film credits the names of drivers are credited but not the embroiderers, nor seamstresses, not the patternmakers, nor the feather workers).

This and similar books deeply impacted me.

These people are my true idols, these are the masters of the craft. And their stories break my heart, because they are going extinct. There is one such man, Bruno Legeron, who is the last independent silk flower maker in Paris from generations of flower makers, from times when there were streets lined with flower makers. He is the last one and he has no children to pass it on to.

I became so enamored with the dying art form that I started to learn it myself, and to apply my own inventions to make it natural and non-toxic. I don’t know what dyes he uses but the ones I use are brilliant plant-based dyes on non-violent silk. I use his old world techniques and pair it with my own, like using a laser machine instead of the costly and rare die cutters.

These skills and their knowledge is our inheritance and it is slipping through our fingers.

I happened to run into an old friend of mine who alters high-end wedding gowns and she saw the flowers I was making. Her face melted into a warm smile and she reminisced to me that she hasn’t seen flowers like these in a long, long time. She said a shop in San Francisco used to import them from France, but not anymore. She was thrilled to see these silk flowers again, realistic ones, not cheesy factory-made ones imported from China.