Austin Scarlett: On Lauri's Wedding

December 14, 2007

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You want to give us an update on what you’re doing now?
I am designing bridal. I’ve been the Creative Director of the Kenneth Pool collection for two years now. That’s a division of the AMSALE bridal design company. Which, she [Amsale Abera] was actually a guest judge on the First Season of Project Runway. That’s how we met. So shortly after show, she invited me to take over as designer for the collection. … So, yeah we actually just completed my fourth season designing for the line.

Congratulations! So the store that Lauri goes to …
The store that Lauri goes to … So we sell out of many vendors across the country. We have our main flagship salon here in New York on Madison, but then we also sell at Saks Fifth Avenue nationwide. So I met with Lauri at Saks Beverly Hills, which is a great town for us. There’s lots of business there. I think it was the perfect location for that, and they do great service and everything, so that worked out. We really sell at any sort of high-end bridal or couture salon internationally -- London, Paris, and some places in Seoul as well.

How often do you get to do a one-on-one with a client?
We do most of our custom work out of our store on Madison. We usually do a few a year. Lauri’s, where we do a complete – Lauri’s is customized because we had such short notice between her choosing a dress and the actual wedding, we just kind of customized an existing style. We didn’t really have enough time to do a full couture thing, but that is something we do, and we make those around $40K to $60K for something like that.

Do you get to personally work with the client a lot?
Yes -- Well I do those custom ones. And then we have what we call a trunk show, which is whenever we come out with a new collection -- we sort of take it on the road before it has a chance to actually reach the stores. We put the first samples, and so I’ll meet with brides. Sometimes they’ll schedule, you know, make a sort of fashion show event out of it or something like that. It’s a great way for me to meet the different brides and to sort of get input from them, and see how they respond to the collection.

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