Designer Alley Online Fashion Store

Designer Alley Fashion Boutique is an online, commission based, fashion boutique whose goal is to showcase and market USA and Canadian emerging and small label designers. We cater specifically to the wearable and home fashion industry. The focus of the boutique is to provide a new or smaller designer a venue that allows them to go directly to the public. Navigating the twists and turns of the design industry is hard enough without the added challenge of marketing. Designer Alley will handle the marketing of your creations so you can focus on your favorite part DESIGNING!

The idea for Designer Alley Fashion Boutique was born in 1999 when owners Talla Mitchell and Camille Mitchell were invited to take part in a year round artisans and crafters market in a local Southern Oregon Mall. During the time they spent as part of the market, Talla discovered that many of the people who were drawn into the store, came beacause of the brightly colored and unusual designer clothing she rotated on the two dress manikins at the front entrance. Several customers became regulars and would buy the clothing off the mannikins as quickly as it was put on!

Within a period of only four months, the four clothing designers, including Camille and Talla, were amoung the highest grossing vendors in the market. However, the market was poorly equipped to handle the growing demand for the designer clothing and in January of 2000 Camille and Talla as well as the other two designers moved into their own mall space, and openned Designer Alley: A Fashion Boutique for local and small designers. As well as their own line of swimwear, prom dresses and wedding apparel the boutique featured twelve other Oregon designers and marketed them both locally and regionally.

Talla started learning to sew when she was four years old. She loved joining her mother in the sewing room and watching with fascination as her mom started out with flat pieces of fabric and eventually turned it into clothing, vests, backpacks and most exciting, stuffed toys that she could play with. As soon as Talla could she joined 4-H and made clothing for competition for eight years. In 1997 she started a small costume design company in Eugene, Oregon called Under the Lights, which specialized in costume for dance, and unique Halloween costumes.

Camille started working with fabrics at eight years old. Over the years she has designed work vests for BLM work groups, designed and made camping gear, and backpacks. She has sewn countless garments for her family and coached a 4-H sewing club for eight years. In 1999 she partnered with her daughter for the first time and together they designed and marketed their own line of swimwear, prom dresses and wedding apparel.

The mall store turned out to be a great adventure for Talla and Camille but several challenges kept arrising for all the newly emerging designers that would ultimatly change Talla and Camille's direction. One of the main issues was availability of wholesale fabrics and supplies. Many of the designers had no choice but to purchase their fabric at retail prices thus making it difficult to market competively. Wholesalers required huge fabric commitments and many of the designers where constrained by such large minimum orders. Another draw back was the limited market of a smaller city, while there was a huge pool of talented artists and designers in the area the customer base was not there to support them. Reluctantly Talla and Camille closed the shop and turned their focus to solving the problems facing emerging and small designers.

They decieded to focus on the supply issue first and started Designer Alley's Online Fabric Division in 2001 focusing mainly on stretch fabrics, the website celebrated its tenth anniversary this year! As we have made our ten year mark we have been increasly getting the comment, " I would love to design but I don't know where or how I would market them!" The great news is we were still asking those questions ourselves! There are several great venues to market products online but just like locally ten years ago no venue specifically for Emmerging and Smaller Wearable and Home Fashion Designers!

After ten years of continuing research it is now time to re-open the doors of a new improved Designer Alley: A Fashion Boutique. This time the customer base is the world, the supplies are only a mouse click away and we have hundreds of new connections, a sales and marketing team, and many more tools available to make your dreams a reality!