Electric Feathers

I love to walk the streets of NYC, looking for new places to shop.  When I was heavily into vintage, I used to go to this one store, La Reina, on Avenue C.  The shopowner, Leana Zuniga sold the best pieces.  She was also a stylist and designers would frequent her store for inspirational pieces.   One time, I was there as Stefano Pilati the head designer for Yves Saint Laurent and one of his muses swept up all of the good stuff and held up the one dressing room for over an hour.

Anyhow, one day Leana told me that she was looking into starting her own clothing line and was looking into good seamstresses in Chinatown.  She eventually did start the line, called Electric Feathers.  Her pieces were pretty funky but I was so heavily into vintage that I didn't pay much mind to the pieces that she encouraged me to try on.

She closed the store to focus on designing about 5 years ago.  I stopped by her showroom in Williamsburg to use up a store credit on one of her original pieces.  I bought a black cotton dress which remains one of my favorites to this day.   Now, Leana's label has blown up.  I see her stuff all over the internet, from online stores (Jumelle, La Garconne) and other blogs (Vain and Vapid; style.com).  There's a hard-to-find jumpsuit that I want to buy from her, but she's too busy these days to return my emails.  I'm not mad at her.  Here's a silk version of the exact dress I bought:

It's now on sale at Jumelle.   Dammit - I wanted to be the only one who had this dress:)