Collette Costello first launched the company in 2008 with a dresses, retro themed fashion collection. This was produced using her own range of designer fabrics. Before starting the company Collette had been employed as a fashion teacher and a commercial fashion designer for a well known high street brand. Her first collection, dresses retro inspired was well received and shown at Leeds Fashion Networks annual catwalk show "Dress Me Beautiful". We have recently re-launched our on-line shop and the women's on-line clothing fashion range has gone from strength to strength, now including designer handbags, that have been sold at Manchester's Lowry centre.
Our company motto is "Brighten Up Your Life", we specialise in selling retro style fashion sold through our fashion on-line clothing boutique. Such as our 1950s style prom dresses, retro rock 'n' roll flared skirts in bright colours and vintage patterns. One of our most popular styles is a 1950s style halter-neck dress covered in quirky juicy watermelons. To ensure our styles appeal to "vintage fashion lovers", we use authentic dress-making patterns for example "vintage 60's clothing patterns". We buy them from charity shops and vintage dress on-line shops specialising in selling retro dress-making patterns.
Alongside our fashion range we sell retro style jewellery, vintage style kitch items for the home such as "cocktail" printed tea-towels and have a fabulous novelty sewing range for budding fashion designers. Our "Collette Costello" range includes items that have been made using fabrics that have been designed by Collette, featuring vintage slogans and images.
Our fashion range is designed in-house and produced in the U.K. Collette takes inspiration for everything for 1950s and vintage 1960's clothing, through to retro student fashion trends. She spends hours scouring vintage shops, dress shops and boutiques for ideas. Collette's favourite vintage decade has to be the 1950s, influenced by style icons of that era such as Audrey Hepburn when styles were classic and well tailored.
On our web-site we have a fashion news section where customers can keep up to date with company news, such as up-coming events and new collections. Using my knowledge as a fashion industry professional I also write articles to help those trying to break into the fashion industry, such as "How to Organise a Fashion Show". We also organise "Manchester Fashion College" courses. Here customers can learn to make a dresses retro style as sold on the web-site, courses are specially designed to accommodate learners. So make a weekly visit to our vintage fashion on-line clothing shop.