New Poster

New poster for the sale next week.

St. Awesome

Hello fellow height-challenged Smoking Lily shoppers! This is Erin from the Vancouver shop reporting in with the awesome results of my St. Augustine hem-shortening experiment.

For ages now, I've been looking at this incredibly cute (and waist-flattering!) frock and sighing; while the "church length" the dress comes with is fantastic for tall gals and anyone looking for a little knee coverage, it's not so hot on us 5'2" ladies. Then, last week, inspiration struck! Why didn't I just take it to the seamstress across the street and have her lop five inches off? (How long did it take me to figure this out? I'm such a genius, I know...) I am happy to say the shortened hem worked out beautifully and I highly recommend it for my fellow vertically-disinclined fashionistas. Success!

Coachella

Give Me A C!

To beat the 89 degree heat I'm wearing the Clover Point Dress (from 2 summers ago). This shot was taken at the Gobi Tent where I saw Devo! and Band of Skulls and Gil-Scott Heron and...

I had days One and Two really well researched (as other concert going friends will recall that I love to do - right Trish?!). Day Three was a bit more of an experiment.

This is the view from the entrance to the massive polo fields (had to be massive to hold the 75,000 strong crowds). Christina's sporting a Lily V-Neck Tank, and a very handy Coachella fan they were handing out on the way in.

I'm happy to report that the Q Dress is mighty comfortable in 90 degree heat - yay linen!. The Palm leaf headdress was just a ridiculous moment.

A short hike out in the Palm Springs wilderness turned into 4 hour trek, but it was really worth it. The desert has Lily's creepy and beautiful esthetic down pat!

GARAGE SALE

Next weekend is Mother's Day and to celebrate we having our annual garage sale.  We are doing somethings different this year, we are having it on the Friday instead of the usual Saturday, plus we are having it from 2 to 8 pm.  It is later in the day, longer hours, come by before work, come by after work, come by after dinner, come for a good time.  So mark your calender 

 Friday, May 7th, 2 - 8 p.m. 

at our studio 

1221 Wharf Street

Green Buttons

Oh, how I love our new(ish) Button Skirt, in all its fabulousness! Between the incredibly charming buttons, the comfort, and the fact that it goes with practically everything, what's not to like? Better yet, it's made from Tencel, an extremely "eco" material.

Tencel is the trademarked brand of Lyocell fiber produced by the Austrian company Lenzig AG, one of the largest manufactures of man-made fibers (such as modal, rayon, and viscose) in the world. Man-made--or cellulose--fibers sort of straddle the divide between natural ones, such as cotton, linen, or silk, and synthetic materials like polyester or nylon. To make a long story short, manufacturers take a natural source of cellulose--for example: wood, bamboo, or eucalyptus--turn it into pulp, then do very unnatural things to it, allowing them to spin the fibers into pretty much anything they want (which explains why rayon, modal, etc., can all look and feel so different from garment to garment). Unfortunately, the systems for processing the fibers tend to be fairly chemically intensive; what makes Tencel so amazing is that Lenzig AG has managed to make the operation a 99% closed-loop cycle. To boot, they even use FSC-certified sources of cellulose grown on land unsuitable for farming!

For anyone interested in learning more about fabric, fashion, and the environment, I highly recommend Future Fashion White Papers, a great collection of essays revolving around these topics.

Happy Earth Day, everyone!

ooooh baby baby

We are using a lot of printed jersey fabric for scarves, dresses and tops right now. There are often small bits left over that are so pretty but too small to do anything with. I decided to try out a baby hat with some scraps one day. The photo is of my pretty little friend who helped me figure out how big a baby head is. She is sporting the first edition, but now we have more in other colours.

coming soon!!!!

New This Week

Close up on our new belt.

The Lily Dress coming soon!  Printed cotton dress with pockets, mostly in black, but I did just find a few meters of grey printed with octopi!

We need a new studio mannequin, she leans and is missing parts.

Big Storm

There is a huge windstorm here in Victoria. The storm has knocked out the power in 90,000 homes and I'm assuming it has knocked the power out on our web server. So if you are trying to shop on line our website is down at the moment. Hopefully it will get powered up again soon. Our email is working, so if you need something, just drop us a line at sales@smokinglily.com.


editor: all fixed!!!

Easter Display

We decided to do a little something fun in the Victoria store this Easter. We wanted to celebrate without going completely over the top, while still keeping in the true Lily spirit. In the end we silk screened some of our images onto white tissue paper, then decoupaged them onto eggs, and strung them on some thread. The result was very cool, eggs that look like they've been silk screened! (A true miracle....just ask our printers!) All of us here in the studio and stores wish you the very best for this Holiday, and hope that you have a very good time!