Update- What's Happening in my World

Hello All,

Life for me has been crazy as usual, and everyone who knows me knows how busy my schedule can get. Lots of things have been going on these past couple of weeks, and before I forget what they were, here's a little bit about them:

Feb. 27th: I was at Camax Campus Market Expo promoting my new print for Nuo. Models wore my clothes and showed off the laptop cases available in the line.
While I was there, Study Breaks, which is a college magazine, asked me to help sponsor and promote their Girls Night Out Contest. Submit a 30 sec. video on why you should win, and you'll be entered in a chance to win one of my Nuo bags bag full of new clothes, dinner, limo service, vip treatment at the clubs, and your own paparrazi for the night. Details on their website here.

Mar. 1st: I attended the Passion for Fashion Luncheon at the Hotel Zaza and got to dine with Mark Badgley and James Mischka of Badgley & Mischka. They were amazingly sweet and down to earth.

Mar. 2nd: I was on Fox News talking about Project Fashionista at the Children's Museum. Project Fashionista is a great way to channel your inner fashion designer to design clothes out of everyday materials. The event is on Wed. Mar. 16th from 11am-1pm, and I will be there to judge the outfits! There will be a lot of other fun activities going on, so don't miss it! Details here. Not only for the kids, adults can play, too (we all have an inner child anyway).

Mar. 7th: I was on a panel for Fashion Group International Houston's career day and student fashion show along with David Peck, Marina Saba, and guest speakers Janet Gurwitch and Carmen Marc Valvo. It was an honor to be around such accomplished people and to encourage student designers.
Later that day, I also met up with Jen from TLC's the Little Couple to make her another outfit. We went shopping at High Fashion Fabrics and she picked out the fabric she wanted. I normally don't do custom work, but she is so sweet that I could not say no.

Mar. 9th: I was lucky enough to be invited to the preview of Cirque du Soleil's new show OVO. Me and my mom got the VIP treatment, free drinks and tapas, great seats, and got to see an AMAZING show. It makes you realize how amazing humans can be. We have no limits.

Mar. 12th: I hosted Macy's "Find Your Magic" Fashion Show at Memorial City Mall. The audience was great especially Angel. I want to give a little shout out to her mom and grandmother. Ya'll made my day!

Here's an upcoming event in case you're in Austin: SXSW has a new fashion showcase called Style X from Mar. 18-19 at the Austin Convention Center. I will be there for the fashion shows and speak on a panel. More details here.

So that's it guys, that's what I did over the past weeks. Crazy huh? Hopefully I don't run out of energy because there's always more coming up.

Ciao,
Chloe

Nuo new print

Hello everyone,

This weekend I am going to be at the George R. Brown convention center for Camex which is a college book store trade show. I will be there supporting my line for Nuo and showcasing one of my brand new prints. Since people always ask how I come up with them I'm going to give you a behind the scenes look at my design process.

This is the abstract flower print I did for Nuo it's a best seller right now so my goal in designing the next print was to come up with a new variation of this classic.

First I find my inspiration. This is vintage wallpaper I love the curved lines.

This is one of many designs that came from this inspiration. I liked it but it wasn't quite there yet.

I pulled out the elements that I did like which was the petal like curved lines. I began overlapping and flipping them until it turned into a flower.

Next is deciding colors and how detailed we could be with the flowers.

The final step is making the pattern. We have to decide what size will look the best on all the merchandise which ranges from small net book clutch to a full size suite case.

These are the final products on the satchel and slim laptop brief. This process seems pretty simple but after it was all said and done we spent over a week in development.

Hope y'all enjoy the two new prints they will be in stores soon!

Love Life, Love Fashion
Love,
Chloe

Supporting locals designers and Spring 2011 Web shoot

Hi everyone,

I know it has been forever since I have written a blog. There have been so many times when I know I should written something but time constraint or just not knowing what to write stop me. What is sad is that I do have so much going on, I actually have tons of material to write about.

So I thought, the best solution to keep in touch with everyone is to video blog. You do not have to read my bad English and grammar anymore. I will no longer torture you with it. My close friends read my blog and just died laughing. I am sometime mortified after I read what I have posted but I am still better then Courtney Love. But at the same time, I cracked myself up with the writing. It really showed that my brain is going at 100 MPH and my fingers is in the school zone.

I will definitely be posting more often b/c I will not have to type. I am a horrendous typist, I create my own language.

Well, my first blog is about the Emerging local designers Party , Lot 8 boutique is having on Friday, 2-4-2011. I talk about in the video. I hope everyone come out to support and celebrate our local talent.

Here is the invite:

Yesterday, we were steaming and tagging the new local designers clothes when a customer fell in love with a piece and literally bought it of the rack. There is nothing like that feeling of selling your first piece. I hope everyone of the designers get to experience that feeling. It is pure joy and elation.


The rest of the video is a little snap shoot of the web shoot we did at the store. I hope you enjoy my first video. I am very excite to start this video diary of my year with you.



Well here is the link to the video:

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Did you notice the bang?? I really like my new haircut, I feel young and cool. That is a great accomplishment for a woman about to turn freaking 40!!!!! I am freaking out.



Enjoy,

Love Life, Love Fashion
Love,
Chloe

Giving thanks andd giving back

Hi everyone,

I have been a bad bad girl this last few weeks for not blogging. I am pretty sure I am on Santa's Naughty list. Xmas is coming up so let me try to get out of it by giving thanks, giving back and letting you know about some pretty great deals I know about.

Everyone loves a great bargain during the holidays. I am always thankful for a great sale myself. It brings me such joy and great gifts.

I want to start off by being thankful for having my business still in this economy. It has not been easy this year but I am here to stay and "making it work". I want to thank everyone that have been shopping with Lot 8 boutique for the last 10 years. Wow! It has been that long. I feel old. I was 29 or almost 30 when I opened Lot 8. Time does fly, have mercy!!

You all have my gratitude for all those years. If you are in the Rice Village for this week only, mention this blog and get a free Lot 8 T shirts. I will sign it if you like. Thank you for all those years and many more together. I feel slightly a bit like Oprah, giving away free stuff.


I want to also thank everyone for making my laptop accessories line with Nuo successful. I still can not believe it is in 1,200 Staples stores nation wide. It is also on Dell.com, OfficeMax.com and Ebag.com. Unbelievable!

Here is my giving back, take 50% off all my DaoChloeDao for Nuo at Lot 8 boutique for this week.

If you are not in Houston. Nuo technology is based in Austin. They are opening a Holiday “Pop Up Shop” located in the new RunTex store opening tomorrow on Far West Blvd @ Hart Lane in NW Austin. The best part is there will also be a dedicated SAMPLE SALE RACK of laptop bags starting as low as $5 for iPad/Netbook Sleeves up to $20 for Totes and Messengers! I might do a special meet and greet there. Will keep you posted.

Well, I hope Santa read this blog and put me back on the Nice list. If not I might have to join the Bad Girls Club. Oh my gosh! I hope y'all know I am joking. My silly humor.

Happy Holidays.

Chloe (Oprah) Dao

Can not sleep.

Good early morning,

Its around 3:58 a. m. I kind of just woke up out of no where. I am tired but can not sleep bc my head is overloading with problems to solves, designing some new pieces for the Holiday, fitting that needs to be schedule, dresses that need to be in production, special orders.
That is just the design and production end for my line for the store.

There is still marketing and so many other things I need to work on.

Part of me feels like the Holiday is coming and I want a mini vacation. But the fashion business does not work that way. I need to have Fall 2011 be finished by mid Feb.

How do I split my time btw design, production, and marketing? That is always a dilemma. I am smart enough to know I need help.

I am trying to be smart. Am I being smart? Am I making good decision. Why do I have to make all this decisions?

Am I doing enough? Am I doing too much?

Why am I writing this blog in the early morning?

Why am I questioning if I can do all this when I have been doing it for the last ten years? Maybe I guess bc I feel like it is a new ballgame out there.

Maybe this is just me pmsing....?.

Maybe I need to tried to get some sleep. Or just get up and start work so I can feel some kind of control and accomplishment.

Am I letting you know too much? TMI?

Am I watching too much Oprah's and I want to share my uncertainties and doubts.


I should go back to sleep and try to have dream about relaxing on the beach.

Wish me luck and sweet dreams.

Chloe

Spring 2011 Video, Thank You Mr. Anthony Dowd

Hola,

So as promised, here are some pictures from the filming of my spring 2011 fashion story. This spring I was feeling happy and free- like a bird. The fashion story is the embodiment of the spring 2011 girl. She is the 3 F's: flirty, fun, and pure fashion. The story begins with a girl who is about to start the best day of her life. She wakes up, hops on her Vespa, buys herself some flowers, goes shopping, eats ice cream, plays at the park, and finds love. I wish I could always have days like that. Here's the link to the video, enjoy!

Unfortunately, the swing didn't make it into the video.


I want to thank everyone who came out to support my collection on Wed. at the first ever Houston fashion week. My team and I were super proud of the collection. It turned out more beautiful than we imagined. Some of even got emotional, lol. You know it's good fashion when you make someone cry.
But most of all, I want to thank Anthony Dowd for his hard work on the video. Without him there would be no video. It was his baby, his vision, and he was the art director and the producer for the whole shoot. He did an amazing job with such short notice. He's my 411. I'm so sorry that I forgot to acknowledge you on the program.

Other shout outs:
Thank you so much, Phil for allowing us to borrow your vintage Vespa. I wanted to drive away with it.

Thanks to Michael and Rich for letting us shoot in your fabulous townhomes!

Michael Frankel and Sean Elder and the Art Institute team for videotaping and editing.

I really enjoyed working with my two models/actress/actor Bridget and Don. Bridget, you looked a-ma-zing in the clothes! You looked modelicious!

Love life,

Love fashion,

Love Chloe Dao

HFW and Spring 2011 Collection

HI Everyone,
I finally have a moment to breathe and update my blog. Lots of stuff has been going on, mostly I've been working really hard on the Spring 2011 collection for Houston Fashion Week! I am super excited and super exhausted, but I gotta make it work and carry on. My show is on Oct. 13th, so be sure to come and see what I've been busting my butt for. You can buy tickets here; 1 ticket will get you into all of the shows for that day. Divisi Strings will be providing the runway music for my show. If you went to my Spring 2010 show, you know that they rock the house.

The inspiration for the collection comes from the color and print of the Think Pink scarf that I designed for this year.

Here is the inspiration board and a couple of sketches from the collection. The birds represent to me the freedom and the exuberance of the 1920's. The collection mixes elements of the birds, laser cut outs, and my love of color-blocking. We have up to 20 pieces already, but I feel that I need to add a couple more evening dresses. I'm hoping that the collection comes together the way I imagined it.

Also last weekend, we've been filming a fashion story that we will be playing in the background as my collection walks the runway. Thanks to the team at Art Institute for doing the filming, and thanks to my models Bridget and Don for making my clothes "modelicious". Don't we all wish we could be modelicious, lol. I'll post up pictures for the filming in my next blog.


Love life,
Love fashion,
Love Chloe