I love getting wedding pictures in the mail.  It is a gift to see where my dresses go and what occasions they are worn for.  This is the wedding picture of Jennifer and Andrea. (Thanks guys!). They were a delight to serve and play dress up with.  Obviously I only did the outfit on the right.

@ Jennifer and Andrea:  You both look so genuinely happy and radiant in this photo.  I wish you a lifetime of falling in love with each other anew every day.  xoxo

Where we buy our flowers makes a serious impact in the lives of many people.  The commercial flower industry is as horrifying, corrupt, and abusive as the sweatshop-clothing industry.  Not something anyone wants to support!

Katrin Leblond Design celebrates the fact that our clothes are ethically made, and that the people who lovingly stitch the garments actually get paid fairly for their labour.  In this industry, that says a lot.

Buying fair-trade flowers is just as important.   It’s the difference between supporting local farmers, sustainable agriculture, and small businesses, and supporting cheap mass-labour, pesticide use, human-rights violations, and unnecessary fossil fuels.

There are many wonderful florists in Montreal that carry fair-trade, locally-grown flowers.   Here are just a few.   Go visit them as you pick your perfect bouquet!!

Atelier Green Poppies

Eva G.

Terra Folia

You can also pay a visit to Jean-Talon Market and see what local farmers have in store for you there.  There’s something lovely about talking to the people who actually grew and harvested the blossoms themselves.

Enjoy the beauty that flowers add to your home.  Buy someone you love flowers, or better yet, buy yourself a sunny bouquet.  Flowers add magic and enchantment to a space.  When they’ve been grown and harvested with love, I bet that magic’s even stronger.

Express your beauty as you are.  Dance in your kitchen and sing to the stars.

Sarah Pearson

These photos were taken by artist-photographer Marie Cornellier.  She has a gift for getting people to show their most beautiful and touching selves.

Betsy, I just love how the cake matches it all.  It looks like it was a truly magnificent wedding day and you and your hubby look very well matched.  I wish you a magical journey into married life and I hope you are laughing together into old age. – Kat

Beautiful amazing Anna.  You will be a momma soon.  You will be in love.  You will be afraid.  You will be powerful.  You will be you.  You are amazing Anna and you will be a great mom.

This is for you in anticipation of all the fun you will have rediscovering everyday things through the eyes of your child.

Your life is your most powerful art.  See you at the boutique.

erin

I wasn’t raised with any Catholic education, so I was unfamiliar with the Sacred Heart.   On this trip, as I began to see so many beautiful hearts all over town, in boutiques, on murals, and even just on keychains, I noticed I was really drawn to them.

We LOVE hearts at Boutique Katrin Leblond.  Just look at our logo.

The heart’s bursting over with flowers, just like many sacred hearts burst with flames.

They say that, in Catholicism, the Sacred Heart of Jesus represents Jesus’ divine love for humanity.   I like to think that when people enter the boutique, they are nurtured and inspired to show divine love towards themselves.   We want every woman to feel they are entering a temple that worships the beauty that exists in all of us, inside and out.

this hand embroidered pillow is available at the boutique

I left Texas with a little hand-made Sacred Heart made out of tin that I bought from a Mexican artist.   I’ve hung it over my work desk, so that the radiance of that divine self-love may carry me through my work days, and inspire me to be my best self.

Like a new dress or scarf, this little Heart of mine is a simple gift to myself that makes me feel special and loved.  Come on by the Boutique and you’re bound to find something that does the same for you!

Express your beauty as you are.  Dance in your kitchen, and sing to the stars.

Sarah Pearson

love by the bowlful at Aux Vivres

Boutique Katrin Leblond loves Aux Vivres.  Not only are they our beloved next-door neighbour, but Mike, the chef and co-owner, just happens to be Katrin’s husband.

Everything there is delicious.    The chickpea curry is yummy and authentic, while the huge salads are the stuff that dreams are made of (mmmm….just thinking about the seaweed and kraut toppings with ginger dressing in the Living Salad makes me salivate).    It’s one of the few places that a giant sandwich will leave you feeling full and nourished.   Do not underestimate the power of their hot-from-the-oven cornbread, smothered with vegan butter.    Washed down with a glass of fresh-pressed apple-ginger juice, you’re bound finish your meal feeling alive and refreshed.

tofu scramble, vegan bacon, sweet potato homefries and cornbread? Brunch doesn't get better than this.

Perhaps the most legendary of all beasts on the Aux Vivres menu is the BLT sandwich.     Stuffed with chips of smoked, slightly sweetened coconut, mounds of fresh lettuce and tomato, and drizzled with vegan mayo, this is a sandwich that knows no match.    It may just be the yummiest thing you can eat in Montreal.

The legendary Vegan BLT.

So go check out Aux Vivres.    Stop by for a chocolate smoothie, then pop into Boutique Katrin Leblond to find some special treasures, and then go back to Aux Vivres again and reward yourself with a splendid dinner.   The ladies at Katrin Leblond will dress you with as much love as the good folks at Aux Vivres will feed you.  You’re bound to leave the ‘hood radiant and renewed.

AUX VIVRES  4631 blvd. St-Laurent, Montreal, QC, H2T 1R2

www.auxvivres.com

Express your beauty as you are. Dance in your kitchen, and sing to the stars.

Sarah Pearson

Beatriz, our beloved patternmaker (we call her our Queen!) has recently retired.  We celebrated her Birthday with a homemade peach pie.  If I weren’t designing clothes, I would be baking pies.

Take time to eat with the people you love.  The food tastes better that way.

Kat

Fabric.  Art, that is then used to make more art, that is then used in the art that is your life.  High quality 100% cotton.  This is luxurious, high thread count, cotton.   We love this print by Kaffe Fassette.  Kat’s team made it into a “cerise” dress (that means “cherry”  in french), a skirt, bedding and more…. available in the store.

I personally can’t wait for it to come in as throw pillows.  I really want one for my bed that is already dressed in various Katrin Leblond bedding mix and matches.

It reminds me of a kaleidoscope, mandalas, Van Gogh’s Starry Night swirls,  Klimt, Toller Cranston’s costume details in his paintings of the nutcracker, summer, fall, arts and crafts, the universe, gypsy magic, and the bindis on my daughter’s custom embellished bicycle that she loves and I Love, LOVE, LOOOOOOOOOVE.

Bindis are normally used for ceremonially decorating the faces of women and girls all over south Asia including Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Indian.  They are kind of like tattoo stickers.  They come in all different shapes, sizes and colours.  The ones on Aya’s bicycle are covered in rhinestones.

I have to brag.   I thought I was a genius when I came up with the idea of lacquering bindis onto her bike.

I loved fitting the bindis onto the shapes of the bike frame.  I loved finding a place for them that  seemed like they were always meant to be there.

Try and find the bits of broken disco ball.

Peeka boo! I see you!

Dring!  Dring!

The image on the bell is Ganesh the Hindu elephant god of abundance. Success!  Good fortune! This cheerful safety accessory for your two wheeled vehicle  is made by a local Montreal artist, Glen, that crazy Mile end metal sculpture artist, responsible for the sculpture park near the train tracks.  You can get his bells at the used sports equipment store on Bernard between Parc and Saint Urbain.

The seat is covered in swimwear fabric, of course!   Kat helped to hand stitch.  Swimwear:  Stretchy so it fits snug and dries fast when it rains.  Cover a bike seat for a small person you know with one of the swim suits they have just out grown.  A few whip stitches is all it takes!

We made this bike from a street side reject with a sign on it that said “If you want it, you can have it”.  My daughter and a friend cleaned it up and she rode it for a while till she complained about the rust.

What colour would you like it to be? I asked.

“Gold” she said to my surprise.

The end result is covered in bindis, spray painted gold, lacquered with nail polish, sparkles and more spray laquer.

I am very proud of this little art project and Aya and I had a really lot of fun doing it.  The basket and handle bar fringe are from Canadian Tire.

Yeah for bikes!  Pedal freely forward.  Free from gas prices.  Free from constant repair costs.  Free from the emissions guilt.  Float on two wheels.  Yeah!  Bikes!  Don’t forget your helmet!

I bike in my cerise dress on my own bike, along side Aya, all the time.

Kat wears the cerise dress available in store. Photo by Barry Maccleod.

Your life is your most powerful art.  See you at the boutique.

Erin.

I am a spiritual person.  I am a political person.

I believe that I am empowered to make ethical decisions that are beneficial for my community by the money I spend as an entrepreneur .  I believe that as an artist, it is my duty to create beauty for my customers to enjoy.  I believe that women deserve to be treated like goddesses entering a temple when they come in to my boutique.  They are to be served, taken care of, draped in fabric and made to feel beautiful.   I believe this from the bottom of my heart.

I have always been politically active and I have always been crafty.  There were certain points in my life where I felt guilty and pained because “just making pretty things” was not saving the planet.  Now that I am running an ecological and local manufacturing business that serves and adores women, I feel better.  I have merged my environmental activist with my feminist and with my local economist in a way that allows me to keep being a creative human being.

And here is Linda Evangelista, our Montreal-born International Fashion Icon, merging her political views that something is wrong in the world and someone should be held accountable with her love of the Madonna.  She got to play a living Madonna in a Religious procession.  I have traveled to Antigua in Guatemala to see these processions.  They walk the streets playing sad brass band music all the while carrying statues and crying for the death of Jesus.  They walk for 12-13 hours.  My main reason for traveling there was to see the “carpets” that the locals make from coloured saw dust and flowers.  The carpets are made in the street prior to the passing of the procession.  When the procession passes, the carpet gets trampled.  It was incredibly beautiful.  (This is reminding me that I should do a post about those carpets.)

I am unusually attracted the the iconography of the Madonna even though I was not raised in any form of Christianity.  To me the Madonna is the “mother”, gaia, goddess … and those are all great things.  It represents female divinity, something each woman carries within herself.

I love religious art.  I love folk art.  I love making pretty things.

It can take quite a while in life’s journey to settle into being who you truly are and not who you wish you were.

It is good to just know deep down to our toes that what we have that really has value is our friends, our family, the world around us that we love.  Go ahead take away the car, the house, the long list of material possessions.   Go ahead!  What I want is to feel safe and loved and be able to share that with my daughter and the world.

Friends make us strong.  They offer us the best embrace to fall into when life gets tough.   There for you when things go wrong.   They empower us to take more risks and listen to our selves more.

Thanks to all my good friends that I have had over the years that made me feel stronger about myself.   It wasn’t always easy but I am who I am today in part because of you and you will always be with me in everything I do.  And even if  you’re  far away  you are still my heart.

There you are.   You know me.  I know you.  I am me and you are you.  You are part of me.  When I grow more into myself you are happy for me.   When you grow more into yourself  I am happy for you. I love how you change and how you stay the same.  I am lucky to know you.  Thank you for sharing everything you do.

Thanks for all the fun we have together!

See you at the boutique.

Erin.

all photos by erin except love sculpture is by tom brosnahan

I made these shirts because YES it is this simple and it has been said before:  the law is LOVE!  I have built my small business around this simple word.  If we make it with love … women will love it… and it will sell.  The surprise was how much men love it too.  They love the store.  They love the colours.  They get it.  They like to see their ladies dressing up and feeling pretty.  The attraction is natural. The girlier I make the clothing, the more men love it.  Hurray for LOVE!

This is the love sculpture by pop artist Robert Indiana

We have one in the old port now and there are many around the world.  Everyone gets it.

Loving our bodies has to stop being optional.  Just buckle down and LOVE your BODY!  Lie in the sun and feel the sun loving your naked body.  Lie on a blanket in the grass and feel it…feel the earth beneath you.  The earth loves your body.  Swim in a river and just take a second to feel the cold water againts your skin.  It is not judging you.  It loves you and caresses you and cleanses you.

I love my cellulite!

I love my double hips!

I love my small breasts!

I love my ….

I invite you to claim love for those parts that have been hard to love in the comment section of this post.

The dressing room.

We share so much with the ladies in our change rooms.  It is an intimate thing to get undressed with someone nearby.  Me, on the other side of the curtain coaxing and encouraging this game of exploration and play: Come and play dress up with me!

It really takes a leap of faith to try on clothes.  To get down to your nickers and your skin and put something new on.  For me, on the boutique-side of the curtain, it is especially fun to imagine what would look nice and and what would fit you, the lady in the dressing room.  Sometimes I’ll bring a handful of hangers to the change room.  Sometimes you’ll find something you would never have tried on and you’ll love it.

I am often deeply touched by the confidences that we share.  The things we say to each other.  The tears are real.  The love is real.

I love colour and I enjoy converting black and grey clad Montrealers to my palettes of purple and red, teal and green.  

Mothers and Daughters are an especially fun duo to have in change rooms side by side.  Finding outfits across generations and across sizes (xs all the way to XL).  We can do it.  We can dress you both and make sure you both feel totally self expressed in the clothing you choose.

How about it?

How about coming to play dress up?

Opening Hours (or call for a custom styling appointment 514-678-9616)

M-T-W 10-6

Th-F 10-9

Saturday 10-7

Sunday 11-6