Hi everyone! It’s that time of week where we introduce a vendor that will be participating at RVR 2021.
As a reminder, you can reserve your room onsite at the MGM Grand right now using our Passkey portal: https://book.passkey.com/go/sroy1121mg. Using our room block guarantees you a great rate as prices fluctuate, and it helps us keep our event financially viable!
Please stay tuned for announcements about COVID restrictions and August ticket sales. Thank you for your patience as we work with our venue to ensure as safe of an event as possible.
The second vendor/brand we’d like to introduce you to is Fluffy Tori! Please read on for the mini interview with Joëlle.
What is the story behind your shop and brand logo? Sabrine, our social media manager and photographer, suggested the idea of doing something with Fluff or Fluffy. We tried many many options for potential names. My technique is that we brainstorm a lot of words and then I use Excel to generate all of the possible combinations of these words and then I'll see which ones sound nice together. But in that case that didn't help. So we decided to look for names of animals in Japanese and see which ones sounded cute with Fluffy. So we picked Tori for birds. It has nothing to do with the first name Tori, my name is actually Joëlle. The logo is just a font that our designer Mezzo found that worked well.
What would your brand “elevator pitch” be? Fluffy Tori is all about Kawaii and Lolita fashion. Brand owner Joëlle (aka Fluffy Kawaii Jo) from Switzerland and designer Mezzo from Germany work together to create fashion, accessories and stationery that will make you feel happy and kawaii as fluff. We create everything from our super popular enamel pins, stickers and jewellery up to dresses, sweaters and shoes in every size – usually featuring pastel colors, cute and magical little creatures and bright and cheerful themes that will put a smile on the face of anyone wearing them. Occasionally, we also dip into more sophisticated Classic and Gothic Lolita themes or create some pop culture inspired items, because we firmly believe that anyone can be a magical fairy princess and a total nerd at the same time. ;)
How has your brand evolved since its inception? I started the brand in 2016 as an "accident". I wanted to make a coat for myself and one thing led to the other and I had started Fluffy Tori. It was my second brand. But our first collection was dresses with custom lace and custom print. That's very ambitious to start with. But now we have realized that we can't just make dresses, it's way too long and expensive to make. So we usually focus more on accessories for the 3-5 collections a year that we make.
What does a day in the studio look like for you? No day looks like the next. Most of the time is spent in front of the computer dealing with suppliers’ questions, discussion designs for the next collection, working on social media or other marketing opportunities. We have always been working remotely with the designer Mezzo, because she lives in Germany and I am in Switzerland. And now we even have our marketing director in France. I also spend a lot of time shipping customer orders and going to the post office. And a few times a year we have photo shoots for our next collections.
What are your favourite materials to work with? We love cotton, so we usually try to make our dresses in cotton. I also personally love making pins. I think they are such a cool medium to put art on a wear.
Who is your favourite designer with less than 5,000 followers that you feel others need to know about? @lollipoplullaby. It's run by the artist Milly and we got to collaborate together this year. She is amazing and everything she does is super cute!
Who is your favourite designer with more than 500,000 followers that influences you? @sebastian_masuda definitely! He is the master of kawaii and colorful! I love everything he does.
Where can people find you online?
Call to action: if your needs are met, get in the habit of sharing abundantly. Follow accounts like @OpenYourWallett and before you buy a new dress, consider sharing your funds with marginalized folks who need help meeting their needs. Take the first step towards a radical mutual aid praxis!
As always, visit prettyprincess.club for more information on Royal Vegas Retreat 2021, or follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. See you next week!