Nanette Lepore Women's Fashion Brand

Nanette Lepore is an American fashion designer based in New York City. Driven by her passion for a good party and her tenacious commitment to quality craftsmanship, Nanette Lepore built a fashion empire - a fair summary to shop by: this is party-minded design held to a craftsman's standard. The label's women's clothing is the N letter's bohemian entry, filed under a misspelled filename (Nanete Lepora), while the brand itself is spelled, correctly, Lepore.

Nanette was born in Youngstown, Ohio, to an eccentric Modern artist and a stylishly smart schoolteacher. When she wasn't traipsing across the country with her family in a VW Bus, she was sewing sheets into gowns for the neighbors. She continued to love fashion throughout her bohemian upbringing, and when she married painter Robert Savage, the young couple headed east to take on New York. The birth of her daughter, Violet, sparked a sense of vibrant life in her designs, and the next year she staged her first runway show.

The Look, in Quoted Words

New York magazine has said that her gypsy-influenced designs are feminine and youthful, and that the looks are full of bold colors and bright prints, with ruffles and lace that manage to look good-time-girly but not overly frilly. That sentence is the complete shopping brief for the label: gypsy influence, bold colour, bright print, ruffle and lace - with the discipline line drawn at 'not overly frilly'. A Nanette Lepore piece that reads sweet rather than spirited has missed the house balance the quote describes.

Shop the print and colour first, as the design itself does. Scale a bright print to the garment's job - a party dress carries the boldest pattern in this letter, while a printed top can anchor plainer separates - and let the ruffles and lace sit where the pattern leaves room for them. The bohemian framing of the brand (its links reach our bohemian fashion definition) means relaxed, travelled, collected - so mix the label's pieces with plain, well-worn basics rather than matching them head-to-toe, which is where boho tips into costume.

Craftsmanship Behind the Party

The tenacious commitment to quality craftsmanship is the check that separates this label from fast imitations of the same look. Ruffles must be finished, not raw; lace must be secured at its edges; bright prints must be matched or deliberately mismatched at seams, never accidentally so. Handle a piece before judging it: the party spirit is visible from across a room, but the craftsmanship the founder is tenacious about is only visible up close, in the finishing.

The brand's official site, nanettelepore.com, is in the references as the place to see the current collection. A Youngstown childhood in a VW Bus, sheets sewn into gowns, a painter husband, a daughter who re-energised the designs and a first runway show a year later: Nanette Lepore is the N letter's bohemian designer, and her clothes are bought on colour, print and craft together.

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