Please understand, this is not to sound cheeky, but I feel like I have already won. Not because my design is the best or I deserve to win, but what I have gained in doing this project the past four weeks has been so inspirational that I almost didn't enter the contest. It is only because of, or more presisely, FOR the individuals who have helped me with the project that I am entering.And, because really, could I look the opportunity to walk the catwalk in Paris in the eye and walk away without trying?

A little about me: I opened a boutique in Park Slope, Brooklyn, NY on April 8th of this year and have been happily designing my own collection and featuring the collections of about 10 other local designers. Life is different, hectic, long, but truly love's labor. And of love, the shop is called Ai Ai Gasa, which literally translated in Japanese means 'love love umbrella' or 'two loves under one umbrella.' Although typically a rather juvenile expression of first love, I find there is no better way to describe the whimsical and often japan-o-fantastic clothing waiting within the doors. So, as one would imagine, I was researching umbrellas one rainy day, thinking, 'I should have a cute brolley bearing the ai ai gasa,' and up came the contest.

If you imagine a girl so eager for love. She waits in the sun. She runs in the snow. She weathers the rain. On no special day, her dream is realized. The plans are setting their place. She anticipates the weather. She waits for the sun. She runs through the snow. But how will she weather the rain? She skips through a puddle and steps over a...wa...a red umbrella? Limp, left, like a poppy trafficked and discarded. A dress, she muses, fashioned from the broken and forgotten. A farewell to the loves of the past and the greeting kiss of one true love. This red will mark her heart and let white be it's companion to wash over the black of traffic, pollution, anger, and greed. The dress is marked with moments of joy, discovery, hope, thoughtfulness, companionship, and journeys of minutes, hours, days, years. In memory, she wraps in the skeleton of the umbrella and bears the crest of two lovers. She pops open her shaggy brella just for fun and irony only to greeted by her one true Paper Doll.

To further explain how I feel I have already won: In the past four weeks, I have posted a sign in the window of my shop to encourage customers to bring in a broken umbrella and receive a 10% discount. I have received a few, one anonymously, but mostly people just ask why. And I tell them. And they promise to bring one. But as people are, myself being a prime example, they tend to leave things til the eleventh hour, and I wondered what I would do if people brought me umbrellas after the contest was over. And then I realized I had to come up with a real solution. There's no point in lighting a match and blowing it out before it has really caught fire, so I put my mind to paper and came up with a few simple (yet eloquent) designs that I could CONTINOUSLY produce. And for this, I say thank you. What designer doesn't want that one amazing thing that they KNOW will be a well received? Call it my little black dress...well, call it what it really is. My big black beaded rainsweater! My funky hong-kong-style, low-rise pants! My rain-sworn suit coat! To be released September 15, 2006. www.aiaigasa.com.

Note: Despite the meager proffering from the shop, I have acquired enough umbrellas to carry a different one for two months (no need to worry), thanks to the loyal diligence of the trash-picking, photo-taking, and smiling faces of the gasa love brigade (my crew). Their diligence is never-waning. And thank God for all the rain.

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