Beauties and their Beasts

As promised, I am posting a selection of photos from a recent photo shoot of the fall collection, La Belle and Le Bete, inspired by early hollywood monster movies such as the Creature from the Black Lagoon. The shoot was amazing, because I had an amazing team - Jed Gammon, photographer, IC Beauty Hair and Makeup, and the lovely Charlotte - can you believe this is her first professional photo shoot?

La Belle - linen blend keyhole top and flannel and cotton skirt

 and le Bete - printed organic t-shirt, suspenders, and flannel slacks

  The other Beauty - satin v-neck top with flannel and cotton skirt.

 and her beast - linen blend top with cotton trousers

 This is actually a dress from the last spring/summer collection, but I wanted to get more shots of it.

 All photos Copyright Jed Gammon 2011

This week and this week only!

This coming Sunday, Oct 23, Belindabilly will be featured along with other designers in the Go Red Fashion Show benefiting the American Heart Association. The show is being held in conjunction with a venue tour in Wake Forest, NC (more info and tickets). 


This week is also the beginning of a new promotion at Belindabilly - our Item of the Week. Every week, one item or group of items will be featured and will be 25% off for the entire week. There is a catch though; the Item of the Week will not be advertised on the website. Only the insiders on Facebook and Twitter will hear about it, so make sure you're in on the secret!


Also this week I'll be publishing photos from a recent photo shoot with Jed Gammon Photography on the blog (preview on our FB), so stay tuned!

Her Name is Yoshimi

Do you ever feel like you are really busy, but when someone asks what you've been up to, you can't come up with anything, or if you do, you feel silly for saying you're so busy?


I have been working on getting ready for a photoshoot for a collection that I wanted to photograph last year. I'm glad I get to meet some other fashion-minded people in the raleigh area--I've got a great photographer and a promising makeup artist. Plus I'm trying to figure out how to use photo-emulsion screen printing without a dark room or an exposure table. I'll probably just end up using my closet as my dark room and building my own light table. That just takes a while and I feel like Veruca Salt--I want it now!


On top of that I've been sketching for my fall 2012 collection and it takes up 50% of my brain at any given moment. I am happy with it so far though, and happy to see how easy it is getting to find cool organic fabrics. Now if we can just get some eco-friendly zippers! 


I'm doing all of this because I've decided to go to fashion weeks in the Southeast in March and April. Why wait and longer? I'll be putting up a Kickstarter project in October to fund the collection, and I'm applying to the Charleston Fashion Week Emerging Designer Competition (cross your fingers for me!). I'll also be heading to Charlotte, NC and Jacksonville, FL.

On another note, I saw the Flaming Lips at Raleigh's Hopscotch Festival last weekend. I think the best word to describe it is trippy--and fun! I'd like to be able to throw a party like that!

Yea, there is a person in there.

Irene Dover

It's quite the rainy day so I figured it was time for another blog post! I was thinking about naming my next dress Irene (after the hurricane currently hanging over us), but she really isn't very impressive after all.

Speaking of new clothing, the next Printed collection will be debuting in only 5 days! Of course, that means the dairy cow t-shirts will only be around for 4 more days... For September's Printed Collection (which will be available through October 31), we worked with Wilmington, NC artist, Kevin Thomas Ward, whose silly yet creepy drawings bring a lot of smiles (and confused looks) to North Carolina's Cape Fear. Ward's first book about Carolina's resident specters came out this summer, and we are excited to have an exclusive collection of spooktacular drawings by Ward just for Belindabilly! Here's a little preview for you:

Don't be scared! It's not real! Just real cool!

Summer Updates!

It has been quite a while since my last blog post, so we're going to try something new - short and sweet. Belindabilly has just recently moved headquarters from Wilmington, NC to Raleigh, NC and we're really loving the change of pace. Raleigh is a beautiful city and it really has a lot to offer - nightlife, culture, fashion, music, local beers! Hopefully soon, it will also offer boutique where you can buy Belindabilly. 


We've got a lot of projects going on right now, and one is definitely to offer Belindabilly in stores - one in Raleigh, Durham, Wilmington, and Chicago to start. Another is the fall 2012 collection. This spring, we're going to have a few real fashion shows and we're really excited about it, but we can't say too much right now. We will leave you with some images of the beautiful eco-friendly fabrics from Herbal Fab.

Look for more from them in the spring, and more from us soon!

New Printed Organic T-shirts, Wicked Art Show, Copper Jewelry

There is a lot going on at Belindabilly right now! First of all, I'm having an art show in Wilmington, NC at Wicked Gallery. If you're in the area, come out for a masquerade opening with belly dancers, music, and free food March 12 at 7pm!


Second, I just got a new book on jewelry techniques, so look for lots of new copper jewelry this summer, plus some interesting metal clothing! Speaking of new clothing, Belindabilly will soon be introducing a new Printed Collection. Every few months we will come out with a new theme of prints that will be available on organic cotton t-shirts, organic totes, organic scarves, and probably a lot of other things too! The premier collection, "Heartland", will be available this month. Here's a preview:

The t-shirts are Alternative Apparel 100% organic cotton, so they are super comfy and super good to the environment!


Belindabilly will also be going wholesale soon, so if you have a boutique, or if you would like to see Belindabilly at a boutique near you, contact us!

New Limited Editions

Belindabilly is introducing new Limited Editions! It's a new division of Belindabilly, part of a redesign of our business plan that brings a little more organization to the company. The Belindabilly LE features in-house fabric designs, printed especially for the garments that they will be used in. This means that the garments are designed from start to finish as a whole concept. We're starting with the new duet dresses and each edition will be available until 10 have sold, and then the fabric will be discontinued. The best part is that they are available in organic cotton! You can view the first ones on Sense of Fashion, and they will soon be up on the Belindabilly website (with a non-organic alternative for a smaller wallet), along with another new division, the Printed Collections. I'll write more about that, though, next time.

Upcoming Rockabilly, Psychobilly, Surf, and Horrorpunk in North Carolina and Chicago

It's pretty quiet in the world of billy music this time of the year, but here's what I can find:

Tonight, January 26 - Scarlett Deville and the Devillettes @ the Horseshoe in Chicago, IL @9pm (free)

January 29 - Nothing to Gain, Jayke Orvis and the Broken Band, James Hunnicut, The Ugly Reggie's Music
Joint, Chicago, IL @8pm 21+ $10

January 29 - Dexter Romweber and the New Romans, Killer Filler, Bustello @ the Pinkhook in Durham, NC

In other news, the new Duet Dress line is available at Belindabilly.com, with more one-of-a-kinds added each week!

New "Duet" for spring

Just a quick couple updates...
Belindabilly.com is back online, literally. It took a few days to get switched over, but Belindabilly's website is now 100% wind powered. Oh, the freedom! It feels really great to have an oil-free cyber side, but there is still much work to be done!
New photos of the Belindabilly signature skirts are up at Sense of Fashion, and will soon be up on Belindabilly.com as well. Also coming soon for spring/summer are new "Duet" dresses. Here's a preview:

Ch-ch-changes

It is 2011 and Belindabilly is beginning anew. There have been a lot of changes in my own life since the beginning of 2010 and Belindabilly has gone through a lot as well. Many projects were cancelled because of this, that and the other thing; intentions for blog posts were never realized; plans just generally fell through. But it is a new year, and though it is time for reflection, it is also time for forging ahead. I restart with new energy and enthusiasm, new ideas, and new hope (no there is no star-wars themed collection in the works) and a new computer! I hope to bring my art practice and my fashion design closer together, with more of my own fabrics in my clothing and more artful inspiration in my collections. I hope to have fashion shows paired with art openings and new stores carrying both my fashion and my art. But, I'm getting a little ahead of myself.

One of my first steps is to bring my fashion practice a little more in line with my personal values. I try to make sustainable and eco-friendly decisions in my artwork and in my everyday life, so why not in fashion too? Not that Belindabilly wasn't started with sustainability as a tenet of the company, with our organic cotton logo t-shirts from the beginning, and upcycled clothing later, but I need to take bigger steps. I need to think about the impact that every facet and every detail has on our environment. That is why I have moved my website from a decent but lackluster webhost to a small company based out of Portland Oregon called Canvas Dreams - one of the few if not the only web hosting business that actually uses 100% clean energy for their servers. I'm not talking about all the places that pull electricity from the grid and then purchase carbon offsets; that's a step in the right direction, but still part of an outdated inefficient system. The servers at Canvas Dreams, and as far as I know, probably the office, too, is powered by wind energy that comes from a wind farm near their facility. That's real innovation and not only is it a good step for the environment, but they are also showing that wind energy is both viable and efficient.

Which brings me back to Belindabilly. There are many steps I still need to take and a lot of questions that don't yet have an answer, but I want to show that fashion can be eco-friendly without having to look like it is made of potato sacks and soybeans. Not everything that is organic has to be olive drab, and I'm going to prove it.