California Apparel News

Amid the more than 130 lingerie, sleepwear and loungewear brands exhibiting at the

CurveNV Las Vegas show Feb. 17–18 at The Venetian were 30 new companies.

For the second season, show organizers encouraged buyers to meet—and place orders with—the new exhibitors through its new-accounts program. For every order placed with a new brand, retailers were entered to win a trip to Paris to attend the Salon International de la Lingerie, the lingerie trade show organized by CurveNV parent company Eurovet.

One of the new brands was New York–based Maison de Papillon, designed by Danielle Salinas and Shriya Bisht, two former advertising-industry executives who launched the line last year while attending Parsons School of Design.

“We were both businesswomen and felt like this was needed in the market,” Salinas said.

Fresh off showing the collection at New York Fashion, Salinas and Bisht were at CurveNV showing Maison de Papillion at its first trade show. The collection blurs the lines between sleepwear, loungewear and ready-to-wear.

“We call it sleepwalker-wear or ‘sheets to streets,’” Bisht said.

The U.S.-made line features luxe fabrications such as silk charmeuse, Sea Island cotton, Italian cashmere and leather.

A silk nightdress can double as an evening gown. “We call this a nightdress, not a nightie,” Bisht said. A robe made from Italian cashmere, lined in silk and trimmed with leather, can be worn as a coat, as can a poncho.

The designers praised CurveNV organizers for their help getting ready to exhibit at their first show.

“They’ve done a wonderful job taking care of us,” Salinas said. “For new designers, that has a huge motivational aspect.”

Australian line Cake Lingerie has carved out a niche as a maternity and nursing lingerie collection that suits “a woman’s needs during the developmental stages of pregnancy and beyond.” A regular exhibitor at CurveNY in New York, Cake was at the Las Vegas show with a new product: a high-impact sports bra for nursing.

“It’s for the girl who’s right back at it after,” said Jaime Johns, Midwest sales rep for Cake.

At the Las Vegas show, the collection was doing well with its pajama sets. Designed to be worn while new moms are still in the hospital, the sets include a nightgown with a shelf bra inside and a matching robe.

The collection sells in lingerie stores, as well as “a lot of mom-and-baby boutiques” and hospital gift shops, Johns said.

French lingerie collection Luli is a veteran of Curve’s New York and Las Vegas shows, said Luli representative Mathieu Desjardin.

Although the New York show typically has more traffic, the Las Vegas show was off to a good start, Desjardin said.

“Today I have seen three of our good customers,” he said on the first day of the show. Typically, the show draws West Coast and Southwest retailers—“people who don’t travel to New York,” he said.

Luli has been in business more than a decade and sells in Europe, Asia and America. The collection is currently sold in the United States as well as boutique retailers such as Title Nine and My Boudoir in California.

“We’re in specialty stories, not in department stores—yet,” Desjardin said.

The line is designed in France and produced in a French-owned factory in China.

“Everything is under French control,” Desjardin said. “It’s like French but made in Asia.”

As a result, the collection features “very nice design, very nice fabric at a very nice price,” he said.

At CurveNV, Luli was exhibiting two new products, a seamless collection called DivaTech and a boxed-panty program called LuliTech.