Laguna clothes designer relies on the magic of the muse

It’s fitting that her last name is Story because she’s filled with them.

Katharine Story, a women’s clothing designer and third-generation Laguna Beach resident, includes little story cards in some of her lines so that people understand what she was thinking, why she created it and, most importantly, how she imagines herself wearing it.

“It’s strange. The way I create new things is — because I travel a lot — I will think about what I want to wear when I go to that place, like who am I going to be?” she said.

Story frequently transforms her shop at 1476 S. Coast Hwy. (katharinestory.com), creating something eye-catching and theatrical in the window. If you want to make an entrance at a party, wear something by Katharine Story.

With clients around the world, along with some wholesale accounts, Story only has to work by appointment. She designs by instinct, relying on more than 25 years of experience.

If you ask creative people how they create, they won’t say it starts with a business plan. That comes later. Instead, they will describe something ethereal — a spark, hunch, dream or vision.

For Story, she freely admits that fairies help her.

“The way inspiration happens it’s so magical, because I’ll be in my studio looking at the dress form, and then I’ll be kind of stuck,” she said. “It’s almost like a fairy comes in and goes, poof, ‘Remember it’s the thing over there in the corner underneath the thing — put that on it.’ It’s definitely like fairies are in my studio.”

Story laughed a little to make sure I knew she was exaggerating.

Her unique creations have a whimsical, unexpected flair. They are not so fantastical that they are out of reach, but they do push the wearer to go for the bold.

“A lot of people will come in and appreciate it but never wear it,” she said. “It’s not for everyone and that’s fine with me. I’m just being me.”

She calls her style “sophisticated hippy, gypset, jet setter or Bohemian chic. It’s not grungy at all.”

She knew her sense of fashion was different even while at Laguna Beach High School.

“In high school I always had kind of a quirky fashion taste,” she said. “I wasn’t really following what everyone else was doing.”

Later, she moved to England and had her first real fashion epiphany in the late 1980s.

“I spent my 20s in London, and I always say that was my fashion training. I was working in the fashion industry there, so I was self-taught, basically,” she said. “I was really inspired. There were a lot of designers just designing, whereas here in America it was always get your business started, then figure out what you want to do.”

She fell in love with Camden Market, opened a booth there and also worked at the distinguished Harvey Nichols department store.

“So I just started putting things together,” she said. “I just started selling and making all the mistakes you can make.”

After getting back stateside, she opened her first Laguna store across from Sound Spectrum in 1995. For five years, she sold mostly other people’s work but also some of her own. Then she moved to a store on Ocean Avenue and things changed.

“I met an artist and he was like, ‘Why are you selling other people’s things?’ He believed in me and encouraged me. So I just turned the whole store into my designs.”

And from there she’s never turned back. She was downtown for 12 years, then moved to her current location, where she is celebrating her five-year anniversary.

To this day, she marvels at the spontaneity behind her creations. Not wanting to take the credit, she claims it’s a mystery even to her how the clothes ever get made. Basically, she just gets in a zone.

“I don’t like to freak my clients out, but a lot of it just kind of comes through me — it’s not really me,” Story said. “I hand-dye a lot of things, so all I do is throw the stuff in there and it comes out like magic. A lot of my design is like that. I’ll even find a scrap of fabric on the floor and put it on the form, and it just comes to life.

“There’s a trap in that because I’m selling all over the world now, and a lot of people want the thing that I can’t re-create.”

She also hasn’t been able to master men’s clothing.

“I tried. I mean, I definitely tried, but I don’t know if I have it. I’m not giving up on it. I go between dressing a man how I would like to see him look, but I tend to put an artistic thing on it, which could make it look feminine. It’s a challenge.”

So for now, only women get to enjoy Story’s one-of-a-kind creations, sprinkled with fairy dust.

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DAVID HANSEN is a writer and Laguna Beach resident. He can be reached at hansen.dave@gmail.com.