Posts tagged as:

tips

Inspiring Entrepreneurs, New Features, Tips for Sharing Your Story

by Mo on December 7, 2010

The Good News

We are happy to see more and more designers merging together their workroom and retail into one productive space; we don’t want you to miss stories of these inspiring entrpreneurs in Detroit and Seattle. Do you know designers sharing a workroom/retail space in your community? Please let us know! Or, if you would like to connect with designers in your area, pop us an email and we can see if we can help you make a connection!

Read more about the Workshop Phenomenon…

New Features

We love watching that designer number click up on the homepage (728!) and seeing all of your gorgeous new uploads on the site! Since it makes us so giddy, we have been highlighting new items in the blog – take a peek!

Soon every item page on Smashing Darling will have it’s own Facebook Like button! Anyone shopping on the site will be able to quickly share your item on Facebook.

More new features to come in the new year darlings….and come February we turn 4! Oh, how time flies!

Hand Crochet by Azhand Shokohi, $110

Curated Holiday Shopping

But regardless of who’s selling it, people want to buy something authentic, made by an individual with a great idea. (WSJ)

We hope you are having a successful season in all the places you sell your designs darlings! Thank you for being a part of our community, and for being on the front lines teaching the world to curate their shopping. Send us a heads up about your holiday events so we can shout them out in the Darling blog. Don’t forget people can also buy e-gift cards at Smashing Darling to shop your collections and over 700 others!

Tetra Dress by Laura Dawson, $245

How to: Share your Story

Business of Fashion:

The Fashionable Rise of Tumblr

Tips for Video promotion:

The Most Suitable Fashion Video For Independent Designers

Event Inspiration from PR Couture:

25 Event Themes To Market Your Fashion Brand

Cropped Tee by Erhart Streetwear, $37

Spread the word!

Become a Facebook fan and be entered to win a $50 Darling gift card *every month.

For more convo follow us on Twitter.

Always * Darling * Forever

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Sharing a Bit of Style Observer’s Favorites

by trish on March 16, 2010

Make sure to take a peek at today’s post over at Style Observer. Jean V. Pratt shares some of her darling inspirations and style tips featuring independent designers.

“My favorite thing about indie fashion is the fresh approach to design. The pieces are not mainstream, and look authentic.” Jean V. Pratt. Style Observer.

Make sure to RSS her blog to receive style tips daily. What could be better with your morning cup-o-joe than knowing what and how to wear the latest.

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Fashion Show Advice From Industry Expert

by trish on May 11, 2009

Today’s post is more of a teaser link. It came to us via Crosby of PR Couture. She listed the link as one of her links on PR Fridays. Anyway, we thought the article had some really good questions any emerging fashion designer should ask themselves before producing a fashion show.

fashion show

So you own a boutique or are a clothing designer and you are contemplating putting on a fashion show. It is a big step for you and an even bigger investment. You want to make a big splash and draw lots of attention, but have you considered all of the variables involved? Before you hire an event planner and send out invitations take a step back and ask yourself a few questions… read more

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Making your Marketing/PR more effective and efficient

by trish on March 6, 2009

I think today is a good day to check in, see where your business is at. Think about how you are spending your day, and how you can make the time being spent on Marketing/PR more efficient and effective. PR Couture is where I recommend you start. Crosby Noricks, the blog’s creator has an amazing amount of information and tips that can really help even if you are a small fashion company doing everything on your own.

Here are a few posts I recommend reading, but dig around and see what else you uncover. Leave a comment with a link if there is one you want to share.

Fashion PR/Social Media: 5 TwitTips for a Successful TwitPitch

Stay In Fashion: The How’s and Why’s of Choosing a PR Agency in 2009

Show Me The Pretty: Fashion PR with Madras 641

Top 10 DIY Fashion PR Tips for Emerging Designers

The Balancing Act: Tips for Building Fashion PR/Blogger Relationships

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Top 10 DIY Fashion PR Tips for Emerging Designers

by trish on February 20, 2009

We love it when we come across articles that help emerging designers navigate through any of the many things that come into play when designing or promoting their lines. Yesterday while perusing twitter, trying to catch up on what all of our friends are up to we saw PR Couture tweet: Top 10 DIY Fashion PR Tips for Emerging Designers. We clicked right on through to find a guest post by Polina Raygorodskaya of Polina Fashion. In this post Polina stresses many important points such as thinking outside the box, the power of the follow up and staying fresh. We love her #1 point and couldn’t agree more with it … be your own biggest fan. There is loads of useful information in this article. We hope you find the time to read it.

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Designer Toobox #4

by Mo on May 15, 2008

New Darling Ricardo Tovar

Hats off to Anne De Pasquale

New Darling Bags by Peep

New Darling Beads – Yellowplum

Community News and new darlings

Welcome new darling designers, we are so glad to have you with us! From as nearby as Astoria, Queens and Providence, RI, north to Belfast, Maine, south to Philly, west to Chicago and all the way out to Hawaii…show us your indie – everywhere! To all of our darling designers – get to know us a bit better and read the latest Darling interview at SFindiefashion.com, and be sure to comment and tell us what you think!

Put your hands together for Lara Miller whose eco-friendly designs will be featured on the show Big Ideas for a Small Planet, read more here. Don’t stop clapping yet…Karelle Levy, aka KRELwear just won Style Wars in Tribeca, NYC…be sure to check out NYTimes images here! Go Darlings, go!

New Darling K Flynn

New Darling Yana

how to – SHOUT IT OUT

Change is in the air. We are redesigning Your House for Indie Fashion, and we don’t want you to be lost in your own home! SDv2 is looking mighty fine, and we hope for it to be up and running around the beginning of June. Be sure your store is current and up-to-date! Here is what to expect:

1) Shoppers will be able to shop a new juried section of the site -the best of the best- here are the criteria:

- Minimum of 10 items in the store

- Uploading new items quarterly

- High quality images
- Inventory kept current with available items

- Have a complete profile

Email us if you would like to be considered.

Other new features

2) Bye bye forums and hello Indie Fashion Event Directory. This new feature will make it much easier for you to upload your own indie events (and events in your area). Therefore Darlings everywhere will be creating a comprehensive list of indie fashion events happening across the country – all in one place.

3) Mini blogs!

Okay here is our favorite. Around the time of the launch or shortly after you will have access to a new mini blog right in your account! Very easily you will be able to keep everyone that stops by your store up to date. Darling shoppers and designers will be able to stop buy your store and see what is going on, strike up a convo with you, collaborate with you, and find out what you are up to next. Fabulous!

Some Erhart Menswear

Kitten Miami Knickerbockers

Photo Critiques

Typically we would would be giving you the next round of photo – how to – in this spot. But with all the change happening around Smashing Darling, we want to make sure you are aware of one already happening. Julie Darling has started regular Monday Photo Critiques, simply put, they are really great, and very important. If you haven’t read the first two yet, take a second and do so in the blog. It is great to be having conversations with you all, be sure to leave a comment. Suggest someone’s store to be critiqued next week (or volunteer your own) by emailing: julie[at]smashingdarling[dot]com. We promise to always be nice and offer ideas and suggestions that we genuinely think will help take your photography (and hopefully your sales!) to the next level.

Have any questions? Just let us know:

trishandjulie@smashingdarling.com

cheers ~ the Darlings

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Keeping up with DIY City Mag

by trish on May 1, 2008

I wanted to tell you that I trish darling, am officially part of the editorial board over at DIY City Mag. I write bits about marketing for the beginner, or maybe not so beginner that just hasn’t gotten around to something that may be very important. I share this honor with many great people. Outi Pyy who writes the Outsapop Trashion blog is one of them.

She is running a series called ‘Selling DIY in the WWW‘. She has many tips about the importance of tags, packaging, photographs and lots more with good links. I thought her tips were very relevent to our community of DIY fashionistas and indie designers. It never hurts to learn something new.

If you have tips for selling in the WWW, or tips for marketing I would love to hear them leave me a comment or send it to trish(at)smashingdarling(dot)com. When you email me let me know if you want to be annonymous, because I love to share with the community.

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Designer Toolbox #3

by Mo on April 17, 2008

Community News and new darlings

We have quite a few new darlings since last month – welcome!- and some lovely new spring wear as well. Lots of safari styles and bright colors to be found to get your senses warmed up. As you read on and learn how to integrate your indie…be sure to let all your peeps know about the Darling shopping spree with Second City Style and Papierdoll.

Other community news on the radar: Trish Darling is blogging over at DIY City mag, go join that community with us! Darling Ahna White has been writing for Jewelry Artist mag, take a peek. Please contact us with any news you would like to share and/or comment away in the blog on things you want to see, things you like/don’t like…fill us in!

New for Spring – Laura Dawson

New for spring – Nichole Angelina Grazioli

how to – SHOUT IT OUT

Smashing Darling was built by designers, for designers. We truly built this community around the needs and wants of an independent clothing designer. Hopefully, with a little help we can get you out there selling your stuff so that it’s the most useful to you and what you have going on. Here are two quick and easy ways to connect your dots online:

1 - Grab a badge/widget out of your account and pop it right into your website, blog, myspace etc. Here is an example at whosiepie.blogspot, (scroll down on your right.) And if you don’t have commerce on your site at all, simply link to Smashing Darling right from your SHOP icon, as KRELwear does, nice ‘n easy!

2 – INVITE your people!

Does everyone on your mailing list know they can purchase from you at Smashing Darling? Let them know! Send them an invitation, it helps you and it introduces them to our community…and so we grow!

1-Go into your store account

2-click on Shout It Out

3-click Invite customers

Simply add in your email contacts (cut and past will be quickest!) and you are done. You can personalize the invite as well, even add a Promo Code…but we will save that lesson for next month!

New darling Kahri

New vintage in the house – 28 Crash!

Foto Finesse – Lesson 3

Exposure

So we taught you a bit about prepping for a photo shoot in the past lessons. The next challenge is making sure that your camera interprets the light in the way that is closest to what your eye sees: this is called exposure. Some cameras may offer very little control over exposure (shooting in what is often called a “fully programmed” mode), but often cameras have a number of choices, usually called exposure modes. Once again, there’s no way around reading the manual here to get the most out of your camera. Check out what exposure modes your camera is capable of, and which matches your situation best.

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