New York, New York!

If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere,
It’s up to you, New York, New York.” – Kander and Ebb

le•top Booth

Every August le•top debuts the new Spring collection at the New York Children’s Club Show – one of the most exciting (and anxious) times of the year for us.  After working on designs, fabric development, go-see’s (a warm thanks to all that responded to our call for ‘Cuties!’) and photo shoots we were finally ready to present the Spring 2010 collection to buyers and owners of the fabulous stores that carry le•top.

Cute as a Button Fall 2009

Ta-Da!!!

The moment had finally arrived when we were able to see reactions to the results of all our hard work.  The verdict is in and…THE SPRING 2010 COLLECTION IS THE BEST WE HAVE EVER CREATED!

Some of the comments we heard during the show:

“It’s all so cute; I don’t know what I am not going to buy!”

“I love the bright colors!”

“This is just what I dreamed you would do!”  (really!!!)

After all the hard work we were ecstatic to hear our retailer’s enthusiasm!  What brought about the smiles and excitement?  Really great groups, including classic Ducks for boys and girls, Grasshoppers that Hip Hop, bouquets of beautiful Flowers and a whole menagerie of our famous Monokinis!  Everyone can look forward to an endless summer of fun – arriving at retailers in January of 2010.

Walking with Dinosaurs Fall 2009

But don’t wait for next summer!  Fall 2009 is here!  The new le•top and rabbitmoon fashions for fall are arriving at your local boutique every day!  The phones are ringing with re-orders as our retailers sell the cutest kid’s clothes on the planet…and beyond!  Check out some of the top sellers from Walking with Dinosaurs and Cute as a Button!

We had a terrific trip to New York!  Our booth at the Children’s Club show looked great after we put up wallpaper, assembled tables and chairs and steamed and fluffed our samples.  The excitement of hearing the praise for our new creations was our reward…and the reward of experiencing New York City life for a week!  Coming to the blog next week we’ll share our experiences at some of the fabulous restaurants we visited!

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Coming Up for Air!

Design Manager, Anna managing kids coming and going at our crazy-fun go-see!

January and February are always exciting months here at le top! During this time we finalize our new collection for the fall and winter – yes, we have to work that far ahead! – then we put together everything to show off our designs to buyers for the season. What does that take? In a word – lots!!! Our first step is getting in all our samples, and “fluffing” them (my word) for taking care of any little problems, hanging, pricing, tagging and finally shipping out a set of everything to our sales representatives located all over the United States.

Second big challenge – photography! This crazy fun task starts with a ‘go-see’ – fashion terminology for model tryouts (I think I promised a little “more” about our go-see a couple months ago when I  first wrote about this. Sorry it took so long – I’m only now coming up for air). This is always pure madness! The go-see is held at our corporate offices – and this year we had a huge turn-out – 128 darlings! Loads of energy – I wish I could bottle and sell it! We joke that we do our own version of “American Idol” – since Karen, our art director, Charly, and I all sit at a table and ‘see’ all the little cuties one by one as they try on our new styles. We look at how the clothes fit and whether the child seems to like doing the modeling – then we have to make some really difficult decisions! Once we have our cast, we start planning our actual photo shoot. Our fabulous photographer, Marcy Maloy met with Charly and me to discuss the details of sets, lighting and all the little details that go into making our magical photos.

This season all the stars aligned and we have great photographs and a very exciting collection! Our sales representatives are showing the samples to store buyers – and they love it! Of course the new fall collections will not be in stores until June, July and August – but here are a few sneak peeks from the photo shoot!

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Go-See

Designers' mischief-making fun with the mannequins

Our amazing photographer Marcy Maloy was here last week to discuss our upcoming photo shoot. We will be taking pictures of the new Fall ’09 Collections – I know, we apparel folks don’t go by ‘normal’ calendars! Here we are in the middle of winter, but we’re shipping our Spring Collection, and doing photo shoots for our Fall Collection! A photo shoot is an event that always brings excitement and more than a bit of havoc here at le•top! Marcy is based in San Francisco and has worked with us for over 10 years. She is a fashion photographer, and her love is working with children – check out Marcy’s Website to see some of her amazing photos, including some of ours!

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