<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" Like an author who locks away her first, unpublished manuscript in a drawer, 27-year-old designer Sally LaPointe keeps her first, never seen or sold collection in the back of a closet in her TriBeCa home. In 2009, LaPointe was designing men&amp;#039;s belts and wallets at Swank, a Kenneth Cole licensing company, when she decided to start her own line. &amp;quot;I wanted to do something more creative and less commercial,&amp;quot; says LaPointe, a native of Marblehead, Massachusetts, who studied apparel design at the Rhode Island School of Design and graduated in 2006. Overthinking innovation, as many young designers do, LaPointe set out to paint most of the fabrics in the 20-piece collection by hand. &amp;quot;I thought it would be a good idea, but it definitely wasn&amp;#039;t,&amp;quot; she says. The hand-dying technique proved to be too time-consuming and needlessly complicated. &amp;quot;Now it&amp;#039;s just the dark secret in my closet,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;In terms of design, there was some growing up I had to do.&amp;quot; LaPointe took a step back, abandoning textile trickery in favor of simpler, single-tone fabrics (jersey, silk, chiffon), and turned her attention to the silhouette. LaPointe describes the line, which she launched with classmate Sarah Adelson (who handles the books), in three words: &amp;quot;Modern, in terms of the shapes and simplicity. Feminine, because I think it&amp;#039;s still important to look like a woman. And aggressive\u2014because it&amp;#039;s bold.&amp;quot; As if erecting a modernist urban sculpture, LaPointe raised her shoulder lines skyward, molded peplums like enlarged flower petals over the hips, and stretched the legs with long hemlines\u2014building out the body&amp;#039;s feminine angles. For fall, her second season (third, if you count the skeletons in her closet), LaPointe was inspired by photo processing, sending her futuristic looks down the runway according to the order in which pigments emerge during film development\u2014red to blue to black\u2014with dim lights overhead and a soundtrack of clicking shutters on repeat. Picked up by Oak in New York and Church in Los Angeles, the collection&amp;#039;s draped tops and easy, tailored pants are evidence that the designer is moving into more wearable separates, but there were still plenty of LaPointe&amp;#039;s dramatic, otherworldly creations. It&amp;#039;s no wonder that earlier this year, Lady Gaga\u2014who can also be described by LaPointe&amp;#039;s mission adjectives\u2014wore a black dress with a neckline that descended below her rib cage from the designer&amp;#039;s spring collection for an appearance at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Only when LaPointe saw the photos online did she learn that Nicola Formichetti, Gaga&amp;#039;s stylist, had been by her New York showroom; the designer has since collaborated with Gaga on custom-made pieces. &amp;quot;She always asks for big shoulders,&amp;quot; says LaPointe. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ll make them big, and they&amp;#039;ll come back and say, `Can you go bigger?&amp;#039;&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/fashion/a9091/new-designer-sally-lapointe/>