Clothes that exude perpetual spring

The lady standing under the umbrella in the freezing drizzle with a tray of margaritas is five months pregnant. You wouldn’t guess it. She’s wearing a frilly empire waistline tunic and leggings under an open raincoat.

Katrin Leblond knows how to dress the part, even when the performance is a fairly crazy one. Offering St. Laurent Blvd., passersby complimentary cocktails was one of the many ideas she came up with to lure people into her store just before Christmas. I half expected a crowd, but there wasn’t one. Just Leblond, her assistant and a tray of Mexican-inspired snacks.

Nevertheless, her enthusiasm was undaunted. Some people have sales in their blood. “I just love making beautiful clothes and watching how much women enjoy wearing them,” says the owner of and principle designer for the Katrin Leblond boutique.

At age 5, she was selling unusual rocks at a stand near her Westmount home. Determined to pursue her creative impulse, she got into the fine arts program at Concordia but was marked for life when one professor told the class that only one per cent of graduates would still be making art a decade after graduation.

“I had no intention of being a poor, starving artist,” she recalls. So she set out to make fashion her medium of expression. After interning with a New York fashion designer, she worked in textile design, made costumes for Cirque du Soleil performers and co-founded a design company.

Realizing she lacked technical expertise to transform ideas into wearable items, she enrolled in night courses, but quickly decided the pace was too slow. “So I hired the best pattern-maker I could find, and just watched how it’s done until I knew how.”

In 2006, she launched her own label and the following year, opened the storefront.

Today, she employs a staff of 12 to produce a steady flow of new styles. The business was profitable from the beginning, she says. “I’ve been living off magic.”

Leblond, 36, occupies an unusual position in the fashion world. For a few seasons, she threw herself into the heady world of creating runway collections (the results are on her website), but says her enthusiasm for that path has peaked. “It takes months to prepare a runway show. You have to tie up production and really obsess on the work, to the exclusion of all else.” Designing for her own shop, she’s able to create more new designs and bring items into production according to the needs of her own carefully cultivated market.

Her ideal client is less like the starving models favoured by the fashion industry and more like, well, Katrin Leblond.

“I design for extroverts,” she says. “Women who have a certain amount of confidence, or at least who have to put themselves out there every day. Teachers love my clothes. Actors, dancers, musicians – women who are comfortable in their skin.” Her target age group is 30 to 60. “Younger women are too brand conscious. I prefer to work with women who aren’t afraid go beyond their own comfort zone.”

Montreal’s default colour – black – is in short supply at Katrin Leblond. If you can find a little black dress, it will surely have red ribbons and maybe a lime fringe somewhere. Regardless of the fabric’s weight, her clothing exudes perpetual spring. Hence, the December margaritas, inspired by a recent trip to Mexico.

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/life/fashion-beauty/Clothes+that+exude+perpetual+spring/5989070/story.html#ixzz1jjI66kuY

To all my beloved clients and to all the women I have ever dressed:  Thank YOU!  You make my heart sing.  When I am dressing you, I am reaching out my heartstrings and caressing your tender soul.  I am giving you real loving attention.  I care so deeply about that aha! moment when you see yourself in the mirror and fall in love with the women you see.  I want for you to all be in love with yourselves all the time.  You are so beautiful to me.  Thank you for coming to the store on cold freezing rain days and hot my-AC-can’t keep up days.  Thank you for seeing the value in quality sewing and local talented design.  I only sell you the best.  If it is in my store, I believe in it, or I made it.I thank Montreal for blue skies and sunshine in the winter.  I am grateful for the inward get-a-lot-of-stuff-done time that winter provides me with.  As an artistic person, I am most creative in winter.

I thank my pregnant belly for moving and growing and filling me with happy hormones.  I love watching my body change.  I love being fat and having big (well, bigger) breasts.  I love talking to women about babies and children.  I love all the hands that instinctively reach out to gently touch my belly.  Every one of them is a blessing to my baby.

I love my staff and I love working in a team of  women.  We are so powerful and amazing.  We are so lucky to live in the place and time that we live in, where I get to be an entrepreneur and we all get to be free women.  I make art and I create jobs.  I control every step of production, from choosing local suppliers with good hearts to retailing in a store that I built and dreamed into existence.  I am manifesting this much love and beauty because I have a great team.  Thank you for standing by me, believing in my art and trusting my leadership.

Thank you to my mother for encouraging my creative path my whole life long.  Thank you for sending me to art school.  Thank you for working by my side every weekend and making sure I am drinking tea and eating snacks.  I love you.

Thank you to the goddess, great spirit, earth mother, god.  Thank you for sending me so many beautiful ideas.  They are endless and I will never stop manifesting them.

Love,

Katrin

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

erin

The flowers remind me of Frieda’s infamous hairdo that she defiantly wore to to represent the traditions of her people.

The Day of the dead is a traditional Mexican holiday to remember and celebrate our ancestors.

Below is a dress that must have been crazy to sew.  The stripes are lined up on the diagonal, but the seams are going in the opposite direction also on a diagonal.  Tartan is not a fabric I would ever design with, but I admire people who do and do it well.  We have a new designer in the store called OcuniD (phonetically Aucune Idee) who has made his whole Fall collection of party dresses in tartan.  They are great.  I got one.

And this is the but of one of Jean Paul Gaultier’s muscle leotards.  He designed the fabric and you can see the top of thigh high boots that go with the outfit.  What cracks me up is the anatomical heart he placed on the right butt cheek.

I love JPG!

All Ivko skirts prices range from $189 to $219

Just forget about black.

Ignore it.

Look below and you will see why.

These Ivko sweaters and hoodies are both $199 at Boutique Katrin Leblond

These are more pictures from the Jean Paul Gaultier show at the MMFA.

This dress struck me because it contains no animal skin at all.  It is a masterpiece of beadwork.  The claws are rhinestones.  So awesome.

Ivko bolero $189

This is Josiane Lacoste:  client who dares!

She had this photo shoot done (and this is not her first) just for the fun of it; just because it makes her feel good.

She is wearing the green Bella dress ( I have one left in XL).

xoxo

This is the art of Nicole Dextras.

It is from a group of work called Weedrobes:

“New addition to the Weedrobes Collection: The Maple Flapper Dress symbolizes hope and prosperity for the new immigrant. The 1920′s was an era of liberation for women and here she is seen as a young entrepreneur fresh off the boat, with her old-world good luck charms of plants and animals.”

I think she is incredible and hugely inspiring.

Nicole Dextras website

This show is beyond fashion…

It is about sculpture that can be worn.

The arms of the dress become fingered gloves with bright red lacquered nails.

The sequins are actually shaded to lend contour to the body.

Go to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts before it is too late.  The show closes October 2nd, 2011

Picolinos shoes on sale $178

Black cerise dress with red dots $199

For those of you who do not know:  These are scarfettes!

They were invented by me, but the adorable term “scarfette” was coined by my dear friend Nadine.

They are also called mini-scarves, hair ties and ribbon-ties by my clients.

Their purpose is multiple.  They can simply be tied around your neck to add a little touch of class.  They can be used as headbands or pony-tail ribbons.  They can be tied onto a camisole at the strap on one side just above the bust adding a textile detail of colour.  Their uses are multiple.

They cost $8 each

These are both pictures that I took on my 3rd visit to the JPG show in Montreal at the MMFA.

The in-soles of those heels are lined with white fur.  Down to the detail his work is amazing and desirable.

It’s sexy.  It’s glam.  I want.

Biking to the top of Mt. Royal is my husbands’ favourite activity.  I like sitting in the sun at the top.

It’s almost surprising to see pictures of me NOT working.  I need to do more of that.

Love, Katrin

It has a huge hood that can be rushed in two directions:  around the face and down the centre back.  This allows you to adjust for pouring rain, romantic strolls or pull it all the way back into a ruffle collar.

It has two buttons and a belt that ties around the waist.  The coat is embellished in the centre back with appliqué and ribbons.

I made it in blue, green and black.  There is a black denim version of the same coat for fall that is not waterproof.  The coat is both feminine and functional.  I promise it will protect you from the rain.  It has a full skirt that give it a bit of a timeless vintage feel.  I call it the Fairytale raincoat.

All colours $380 S-XL

available at the boutique or on etsy

visit Katrin’s etsy store