On August 4th at Playtime New York trade show on Wall Street, I had the pleasure of interviewing Laura Egloff, Founder and Designer of Velveteen. California designed, Swiss-owned and Hong Kong-based, Velveteen is passionate about creating sophisticated and classically styled children’s fashion that is as whimsical and comfortable as it is beautiful.
Read the interview with Laura Egloff of Velveteen at Playtime New York
“Velveteen is actually a project that we’ve been working on for…it’s basically a lifetime of work. I went to school for fashion right out of high school and then went back and finished a business degree. My parents insisted on getting a proper business education. That took me into finance for about 10-15 years. It’s been over that time that I’ve been developing the concept of Velveteen.
Some of my favorite pieces are these silk georgette dresses. You’ve got 3 layers of silk georgette and a layer of cotton silk underneath. We had trouble getting the dress off of the young models at the photoshoot because they were having so much fun twirling around and enjoying it. This is the original prototype. And this dress has a little bit of a story behind it. It’s the remnants of the fabrics I used to create my sister’s wedding dress. My daughter was going to be in the wedding and I decided to make her a little dress. It’s done beautifully for us…
To me the key to the line is that it has to be comfortable and beautiful. Children need the freedom to play and enjoy and they don’t want to be too tied up in their clothes.
So here are some of my favorites in the Holiday Collection. We’re using a lot of hand embroidery. All of our clothes are made in India and we’re using a lot of really high-quality cotton and silks. All of our special embroidery for our Holiday collection is hand embroidered. We’re also making some of our own fabrics that are all block printed. These are all old, beautiful artisan techniques that we’re modernizing and giving it a really global look to the collection.
These two dresses that I adore are easy silhouettes that are classic and have been spruced up with a bit of hand embroidery. This dress is actually more of a structured look for us but again this is cotton silk and its so soft and the girls love the twirling.
For the boys, for the holidays we have what I call the Jimmy B shirt, it’s James Bond (no big secret). It’s a great little tuxedo shirt with hand pinned tucking and a black satin applique on the front. It looks like he’s had a rough night at the casino, the tie is off after a long day, and a little french cuff.
One of our key pieces is this Bohemian Jacquard dress, shirt, and shorts that have a really beautiful holiday look to it. The shorts can be worn with some legging and a little satin pocket.
For the Spring-Summer collection I had three inspirations, all built around Summer holidays by the waterfront. I don’t care if it’s the lakeshore or the seashore. I grew up in California in Los Angeles and I spent all of my Summer holidays with my parents at the beach. There’s this very sort LA vibe, a lot of purples and pinks. This is one of my favorite dresses. It’s sort of a bit Mexican inspired, I’m from LA and I took a little bit of that ethnic inspiration. The colors are beautiful pastels. They’re yellows and purples and greens. Which are some of my LA beach inspirations. This is a great little jacket where you’ve got the floral print lining and a little pair of shorts to go with it.
The other inspiration I had was the French Countryside. To me the colors of navy blue and yellows and dress blues and ecrus are very French Countryside to me. So we pulled together a couple of items I love. This is a little bikini bottom for the little girls. This beautiful little spaghetti strap top with the shorts that come in a navy blue. To me I can see little ones running through the ally ways in the countryside in these little fun outfits.
For the boys, we have a little suit. You can’t really go wrong with seersucker I feel like. It’s so Great Gatsby but I still love it. So we have a nice little blue sear sucker suit and it also comes in chambray.
The first two collections have had a really great response, and have been sold mainly online through our online boutique as well as boutiques in Los Angeles, Hong Kong, and Paris and they’ve all done really well.”
