Posts Tagged: lara bly

Her experience working for others as well as starting her own line makes Lara Bly a great resource for beginning designers. Beginning to work on her own line, she remembers, called on skills she hadn’t used in a while. “It was a big change after having patternmakers and machinists working for me at Sacrosanct. It took a while to remember what I knew about sewing. I was rusty, but it came back quickly. It took me a while to transition away from Sacrosanct’s way of doing things,” she remembers. “I would call them up, and ask ‘could you get me in touch with those people who did the beading?’ or try to track down my old favorite machinist. It was like I was teaching myself all over again to do patterns.”

Studying fashion design and marketing at the American Intercontinental University in London, then living and working in cities like Beirut and Los Angeles as well as New York gives Lara Bly a uniquely cosmopolitan perspective on the business of fashion. She has held a supervisory position at Sacrosanct, a company based in London and Beirut. She is developing her own fashion line for women. Lara Bly and her husband share a studio in the Banana Factory, a Pennsylvania art space supporting local creativity. She shared some of her thoughts with PinkyShears about the fashion industry, aesthetics, and getting a business started, as well as her insights fabric sourcing.