KAPAA — Fabric-maker, couture designer and artist Louda Larrain is known for her bright, intricate materials and explorative fashions, and now she’s expanding beyond the runway and taking her styles to the streets with a new T-shirt line.
Edgy graphics are combined with hand embroidery and Larrain’s own materials to create these shirts.
“I really wanted to do something that an elegant woman or a cool kid could wear,” Larrain said as she showed off the new line inside her Kapaa workshop. “I’ve made it in a style that’s like my couture pieces. That’s how I see the world.”
For 20 years, Larrain has been creating couture designs in Paris and New York. Siberian-born, she arrived in Paris in 1996 and put in her time in fashion there, eventualy designing fabric for companies including Chanel and Christian Dior.
She moved to New York in 2005 and then moved to Kauai in 2013 with husband Gilles Larrain.
The move to the island gave both of them a fresh angle for their creativity, and Louda Larrain the opportunity to pursue a dream she’s had since she landed in America — to be a businesswoman as well as an artist.
“I went to America and wanted a business. I wanted to experience this,” Larrain said. “I contemplated it for a very long time and I shrank my idea from having a line to just doing T-shirts.”
That’s because T-shirts can send a clear message with one glance, and provide multiple options for creativity and design, she said.
“You can express many things, and it’s a classical thing that’ll stay in our wardrobes forever,” Larrain said.
All of the shirts feature Larrain’s graphics, printed onto a white tee. Then, she adds the embroidery, combined with her handmade material, in different shapes.
Several of the designs feature flowers inspired by her island home, and she embroiders surfer girls on others and other designs involve a heart and a sparrow in a tattoo style.
Every one is finished by hand and ready to wear.
The endeavor is one that’s meant to be another outlet for Larrain’s creativity, specifically planned not to take up too much of her time and to be inspiring both to create and to wear.
“I did not want it to consume me to the point that I would have no time to do my other artistic things, (but) I wanted to design,” Larrain said.
Larrain’s new line, Louda Collection Action Hawaii, is available at her online store at loudacollectionaction.com
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Jessica Else, staff writer, can be reached at 245-0452 or jelse@thegardenisland.com.
