Content material sponsored by One-o-One
To know the design aesthetic of Chris Bryant, the proprietor of One-o-One, fashionistas want look no additional than the web site 101Healdsburg.com.
There, Chris and a buddy mannequin the brand new fall and winter arrivals on the stylish Healdsburg boutique. They twirl, dance, pose and have enjoyable on digicam in stylish prints, subdued hues and opulent materials. Welcome to Chris’ newest finds for the season.
In an interview from her residence in Cazadero between journeys to New York Trend Week and Prêt a Porter in Paris, Chris stays as smitten by her ardour for trend as she was the day she opened her first retailer in 1978.
A self-confessed former hippie who attended UC Santa Cruz, Chris started stitching leather-based luggage for craft gala’s when she labored at a tannery that bought leather-based. These in-demand equipment turned the spine of Out of Hand, a retailer that opened in October 1978 in Duncans Mills and closed in Healdsburg in 2008. Chris did all the pieces there herself, uncontrolled. “I used to do all the pieces, all my very own garments. I made garments for performs and pals. Then we had youngsters, and that was the tip of doing all the pieces for the shop,” she laughs.
Round his fiftieth birthday in 2002, when life settled down a bit, Chris eyed a high-end boutique like One-o-One to showcase unbiased European clothes designers. She and her husband, Invoice Bryant, renovated the house at 101 Plaza Avenue to create the ladies’s-only retailer Chris had been dreaming of. She opened One-o-One in November 2002, proper subsequent to her males’s retailer, Outlander.
At present, One-o-One brings distinctive treasures with a bit of caprice and whimsy from designers all over the world. Every vendor is a small designer, and lots of are ladies who not solely design their strains, but in addition run their very own small companies. “They’re all somebody’s imaginative and prescient of fascinating garments for fascinating folks and likewise somebody whose imaginative and prescient I recognize and agree with,” Chris mentioned, singling out Pal Offner, a design collaboration between two younger German women. “There are few younger ladies designers who actually have a imaginative and prescient like mine, making garments which might be a bit uncommon, a bit eccentric.”
What’s on the cabinets at One-o-One? “It isn’t trend garments in any respect. They’re all fancy items that keep stunning for years to come back,” mentioned Chris, who eschews quick trend in favor of fewer, prettier, costlier items to cling to. “Nothing right here goes to be thrown away subsequent 12 months.”
Chris is drawn to garments that make her really feel comfy, and this trend savvy will certainly not tolerate discomfort. “None of my garments go together with excessive heels, that is what I imply,” she mentioned. “I need folks to smile once they take a look at my garments and assume how good I look.” Chris, who prefers trend that enhances her personal persona and elegance, mentioned: “I need to present confidence and I search for a playful really feel in my garments. I do not like that they’re tremendous strict or restrictive. I like them unfastened and playful.” You will not discover daring colours or wild prints in Chris’s assortment, as a result of she would not need to put on a “murals.” As an alternative, she sees herself extra as an artist who makes use of her physique in her gown as an on a regular basis canvas for trend that may stand the check of time.
On the buying entrance, this savvy retailer seems to be for what it likes and follows a easy philosophy: if you happen to prefer it, you purchase it, and if you happen to like it, you purchase quite a bit.
Over time, Chris has developed a loyal buyer base, serving Healdsburg’s native and regional clients from Ukiah to the Bay Space, but in addition attracting consumers from throughout the nation.
An annual occasion that each regulars and new clients love—and sit up for—is One-o-One’s annual New 12 months’s sale, when merchandise is diminished to half worth. It is Chris’s approach of placing some actually costly objects right into a extra cheap scope. “It is a large drawback,” he mentioned.
Chris mentioned he is been fortunate to have Invoice Bryant as his companion in life and enterprise, summing up their relationship this manner: “He is the one which begins our lives and I am the one which ends. You want each.
Whereas Chris has been looking the world for uncommon and distinctive designers and contours for many years, he hasn’t gotten drained one bit. The truth is, he enjoys his alone time on the annual clothes and trend commerce reveals, the place he can do no matter he needs and go the place his eye and coronary heart lead.
It might be that even after 44 years in enterprise in Sonoma County, Chris would not think about what he is doing as work.
“I am proud to say that I have not had an actual job since 1974,” she mentioned, simply earlier than setting off on her thirty ninth buying journey to Paris.
One-o-One, 101 Plaza St., Healdsburg, CA, 707-433-2800, 101Healdsburg.comopen day-after-day from 10 am to six pm