Fashion Slow Lane!

This weekend we went to the street festival in Little Italy located in downtown San Diego.   The chalk art was amazing.  These photos were taken with my IPhone 4!  My favorite was the Dogue Italia-very clever.  Anna Wintour would be proud. (: The food was tasty as well.  San Diego maybe a small city but we do have some great cultural activities. Enjoy! Ciao, Rocco

In the past five years I have been to Italy several times to go to the Linea Pelle show, meet with factories,  check out tanneries and hardware suppliers.   I  also lived in Milan for six weeks to take a course on leather handbag pattern making!  That was an amazing journey..(that sounds like something that a contestant from "The Bachelor" reality TV show would say).  When I was living in Milan I went to Lake Como several times and travelled all around Italy.  It was an adventure and I made some really great friends along the way. Vintage Scooter in Milan The next leather show in Bologna is this fall and I have no plans to go.  Since I closed my leather handbag line Rocco e Dante late last year  I don't have any production needs that require me to go to the leather trade show this fall.  Very disappointing!  I used to love to go to just to eat the amazing Italian food and to run into old friends in the fashion industry. P.S. Bu...

This is my favorite park in Bologna, Italy.  Have you ever been here? I also like the interesting door knockers.  Love this one.  I guess I will move here someday.  It has more interesting things to view than the United States for me anyway.

I leave in just a few days to go to Linea Pelle in Italy. I hope to find some unique leathers and really cool hardware, not only for myself but for some of my freelance work that I will hopefully have in the coming months. Freelance has been slower in 2009 than in 2008. In 2008 I was super busy and designed about 10 collections for various clients around the United States and Canada. This year, not so much. I think its because many handbag and fashion accessories designers have been laid off due to economy, and now they are also offering freelance services, so I have some competition! However, I must say the clients I have had this year so far are amazing women and have been very cool to get to know over the months as we tweak designs and deal with factories in different countries and the challenges that come with product development. I went to Bologna, Italy last year for the Linea Pelle show but I only went for one day and did not have a chance to check out everything because ...