A new dress doesn’t get you anywhere

“I mean, a new dress doesn’t get you anywhere. It’s the life you’re living in the dress, and the sort of life you had lived before, and what you will do in it later.” D.V, pp. 147-8.

That observation—provided by the indisputable maven of fashion—Diana Vreeland (1903-1989)—in her chatty, wonderfully rambling book D.V., first published in 1984, has provided a kind of touchstone for SA VA. Sarah Van Aken, founder, head designer and chief community organizer, believes that fashion design for her provides a platform for communicating and promoting ideas about the world community, particularly as they relate to early childhood.

We at SA VA have used this dictum to validate our sensibility about fashion—that fashion is more about the women wearing it than about the designer or the dress. That means, we “want to fuse our design sensibility with [our customers’] sense of style,” as well as provide a platform for developing shared ideas. In other words, we are more interested in engaging in an on-going dialog with our customers about what matters to them most, as well as about their fashion sense, than we are seeking to impose our sense of style.

To be sure, SA VA has a decided pointed view and a wonderfully quirky and irresistible design sensibility. But our customers also know what they are looking for and how they want to express their individuality.

How we’ve used this point of view to create SA VA will be the subject of forthcoming blogs.