California Apparel News

In Lisa Vian Hunter’s retail store in Palo Alto, Calif., classic movies starring Audrey Hepburn and Doris Day play on a television set in the background. The prim dresses and car coats that Hunter designs look like they could have stepped out of the television screen and onto the sales floor.

Inspired by 1950s and 1960s fashion, Hunter wanted to create “fun, wearable, classic” and “not trendy” designs that she would wear. The result was sophisticated stretch-charmeuse cocktail dresses, Italian-brocade coats and Belgian-lace pencil skirts. “I line my coats and a lot of my skirts in silk charmeuse. My customers love that. They put on the coat, put on the skirt and feel luxury immediately,” Hunter said.

Hunter was a late bloomer in the fashion industry. After working with her husband, who published a rock magazine, she designed and manufactured home accessories. At 37, she went back to school to study fashion design. “I felt like it was time to go for the career I always wanted,” Hunter said, even though “I was like the old lady at the school.”

Hunter’s previous business experience got her ahead of the class. She easily transferred her resourcefulness and organizational skills to the apparel industry. In 2006, two years after she graduated from the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising in San Francisco, she launched Vian Hunter and opened a retail store. She started selling Vian Hunter wholesale shortly after and showed the line in 2007 during San Francisco Fashion Week.

Wholesale price points range from $35 for a lace scarf to $80 for a stretch-charmeuse top and up to $250 for an Italian-brocade coat. For more information, call Vian Hunter at (650) 327-2272 or National Sales Manager Linda Lipetz at (212) 391-5639 or visit www.vianhunter.com. —Rhea Cortado