Sandra Harvey and Family Keep Ahead of the Game With Costa Mesa Boutique
Bell-bottom jokes may have finally fizzled along with the fad itself after two years of appearing in every designer’s collection, but for Newport Beach designer Sandra Harvey, the punch line is bittersweet. Her flared-leg silhouette debuted five years ago--long before any store buyer had seen bells by big name labels.
By being among the first, she received laughs instead of orders from buyers who thought she was kidding.
Harvey got a similar response when she showed her long, silk satin slip dresses in 1991 to a buyer at Barneys New York, a store known for taking risks in the face of mainstream fashion. “The buyer said that length would never, never sell,” recalls Alexandra Stanton, Harvey’s associate.
With such dramatic silhouettes as ankle-skimming stretch velvet tubes trimmed in curled ostrich feathers (about $125) or long jersey skirts shirred in the back a la Jean Harlowe, Harvey’s signature style seems revolutionary only for its elegance combined with comfort.
“Sandra is always ahead of everyone else. Dealing with buyers whose jobs are on the line and who don’t want to take a risk with a new designer just became frustrating,” adds Stanton, who is also Harvey’s mother.
Harvey grew unsatisfied with buyer’s attempts to edit her designs. On her own, she was developing a private clientele of women she met at nightclubs who begged to buy the clothes off her back.
Tired of the hassles of being a retail supplier, Harvey, Stanton and their husbands decided last year to go into retail themselves. Their showrooms in New York and Los Angeles were closed, and the boutiques and department stores nationwide were shipped their last order. The four settled on a location along Newport Boulevard in Costa Mesa, next to hipster magnets Rock N Java and Tower Records, for the first Sandra Harvey Boutique.
Her mother pressed her to look for a space larger than the 400 square feet the former barber shop offered, but Harvey recalls that her draw to the location was “spiritual.” She had driven by the store often on her way home, every time repeating that the shop space would someday be hers. After a five-month interior make-over, the boutique opened in October.
“I’ve had (the store) designed for 10 years,” Harvey says. “This is my dream. It’s what I wanted my whole life.”
The plumbing was yanked out, the ceiling stained and a wall built separating a back storage room from the rest of the store. A Gothic-like cathedral doorway was cut into the wall. Chandeliers and refurbished antiques contrast beautifully with the yardage of plush dressing room curtains sustained by a crude chain.
She fought with the landlord and several painters about the floor, which she wanted painted with a leopard pattern. Finally Harvey resigned to get on her hands and knees and do it herself, with the help of her family. She clocked their joint effort at 300 hours. Harvey describes the narrow space as “Cleopatra-esque”--sensuous, intimate and very feminine. “This is a woman’s boutique,” she declares.
“I get so many boys and men in here who later return with their girlfriends and wives to get them out of their jeans and into glamour. Tough men come in here, but when they see their women walk out of the dressing room they turn to putty.”
That effect is no doubt a response to Harvey’s sartorial philosophy: “I consider a Sandra Harvey woman sexy, sleek, sophisticated, understated. But she leaves a lingering impression that’s haunting, never loud and never forgotten. She would never wear sequins.”
Adds Stanton: “What do women want? They want to be elegant but sexy. And a man wants to feel proud without feeling he needs to cover her up.”
Harvey works in two primary fabrics: matte jersey and stretch velvet. Organza, georgette, cotton linen and a heavy silk satin also make the seasonless collection. Fabrics are cut on the bias, a practice that is expensive, but Harvey says it pays off because shapes are softer, fitting a woman’s figure better.
“My grandfather was Russian, gorgeous and a fine dresser. He used to tell me that fabric is the most important part of a garment, the way it looks, feels, smells,” Harvey says.
Her velour-like velvet is washable and travels well because it doesn’t crush and it stores compactly. And Harvey adds that it’s perfect for day and night.
The former wardrobe consultant is well aware of the need for a practical wardrobe. The Basics group, in black or olive stretch velvet, features separates such as leggings, pullovers, cat suits and bodysuits; pieces average $100.
Designed with a no-fuss sense, these comfortable separates consider such problems as the double-derriere syndrome caused by most bodysuits. Harvey’s has no snaps or elastic. Items such as the wrap-around top can also serve more than one use: Knotted in the front or the back, it serves as a top or a light jacket.
“I design for me,” Harvey says. “I have so many events to go to. I never think, ‘Is this going to sell?’ ”
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The opening of Barbarella, a friend’s nightclub in Los Angeles, last year inspired her to whip up a long velvet tube with black plastic breast forms that go over the appropriate area. The special-order gown sells for $250.
“Whenever I have something to go to I design a new outfit,” she says. The holidays proved especially prolific, with a new design a week. Fortunately for Harvey’s fans, she and her husband, Dana, maintain an active social life year-round.
A sculptor, photographer, painter and all-around artist, Dana met Sandra seven years ago when he was a baby-sitter for her three children, now age 9 to 14. They married in 1990 and had a child, now 4.
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Fashion has become a family affair. There is the partnership with her parents, Alexandra and Thomas Stanton, who commute from La Jolla a few times a week to mind the store. Their involvement has allowed Sandra to concentrate more on the creative side of the business, while Mom and Dad wrestle with the numbers.
The New Zealand native and son of a seamstress, Dana, 26, designs a line of avant-garde wear, Angel Boy, to cater to the eclectic club rats of Los Angeles (select items are available at the Sandra Harvey Boutique).
Harvey’s eldest daughter, Candice, serves as the Sandra Harvey model, gracing posters and other promotional material. Only 14, she can appear twentysomething--just like her 34-year-old mother. Indeed, the two are often mistaken as sisters; and Harvey’s mother looks far younger than her 52 years.
Their fountain of youth is a formula handed down for generations that Alexandra Stanton is bottling into a line of natural skin care products to be sold in the store this year.
Working alongside this venture is Sandra Harvey, who will debut a signature line of “extremely matte” lipsticks this month, as well as a namesake fragrance later. “You can do without the other cosmetics, but never lipstick or perfume,” she insists.
Other plans for this year include a boutique along Beverly Boulevard in Los Angeles. Eventually, Harvey says, she would like to see a chain of boutiques along shopping boulevards internationally. She says she will also continue her advocacy of homeless children and basic health care with such organizations as Child Help USA.
Fashion-wise this year, Harvey won’t be joining the punk renaissance that Paris and Milan are slamming spring with. That dress decorated with rows of gleaming silver safety pins on the cover of style bible “W” in November? Harvey did it in ’92. Gianni Versace may have never heard of Sandra Harvey, but she has gotten used to this kind of “coincidence.” She keeps the pinned dress (long, $300; short, $225) around because “the club girls love it.”
Instead Harvey has returned to her favorite eras, the ‘20s and ‘30s, playing with pink, a shade she considers perfectly rococo and fitting with the beaded tassels and delicate point shoes she predicts will be a hit this year.
But still expect a blackout through the collection. Although she occasionally sees use for colors such as red, turquoise or olive, color, she says, “is an accessory.”
Her silhouettes will continue their slinky feel. But the designer warns: “You don’t have to be skinny to be slinky.”
“I always loved ‘20s and ‘30s glamour. I love the elegance,” she says.
Harvey, who will wear a boa like it’s a scarf, is nicknamed “glamour puss” by her buddies. “I don’t think it’s being a glamour puss. I’ll go to the grocery store dressed the same as going to a club,” she quips.
“I’ve always idolized older women like my grandmother, the way they dress, the jewelry, the powders. It was my grandma who bought my first sewing machine.”
After graduating from making doll clothes (which she sometimes made of clothing taken without permission from her mother’s closet), a teen-age Harvey turned to stitching outfits for herself--and friends who pestered her. She took classes in pattern-making, design and illustrating for “six years on and off” at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa.
“I’m obsessed with fashion; it’s the only thing that matters to me,” she says.
With the entrance into retail, the family now makes its own patterns and samples and keeps production to a limited number of units, usually six or fewer of a style in a particular fabric. Harvey says this is a way to ensure that a customer won’t be wearing the same outfit as everyone else at a party. “They’re supposed to be special,” she says, “like couture.”
The quality of couture is apparent in Harvey’s collection--without the couture prices. Items retail for $40 to $300; the higher price tags are custom suits and gowns. At the boutique, Harvey offers her personal attention to customers, including fittings, something she says she missed as a manufacturer.
“Everything here fits every woman: curvaceous, rail, short or tall. Women come in saying ‘I don’t have the figure for this stuff.’ They come in insecure of their bodies. They leave proclaiming ‘I am a woman.’ That’s why I’m in this business. I just live to see women beautiful.”
