Smitten by Smith Trunk Show in Birmingham, AL

I am so excited - my dear friend Virginia Harkins is having a Trunk Show for Smitten at her new house in Birmingham. I am so fortunate to have such good friends!
We may have the UA football game on in the background... Come join us for wine, appetizers & shopping!

Follow Smitten on Twitter!

http://twitter.com/smittenbysmith

Exciting news for Smitten!

The wait is over...
You can now buy Smitten clothes online.
Just visit our Website, http://www.smittenbysmith.com/ to shop Holiday & Spring Collections!

Smitten by Smith Trunk show at The Market & Mainly Shoes

Mark your calendars, Smitten fans!
Come by The Market in Pensacola, FL on October 1st, 2009 to shop Smitten's Holiday & Spring Collections.

Everyone deserves a little play time...

While we were in Asia, we decided we would take a weekend trip to Hanoi, Vietnam.
We flew an hour and a half and poof - we were in Vietnam.
Vietnam is a beautiful country. My only complaint would be that they have an over population of scooters in Vietnam.
There were several occasions when I thought my Mom would die... as road kill. Now that wouldn't be pretty, would it? It is truly amazing how many people can fit on one scooter...or in one city for that matter!
There are people EVERYWHERE.
After a couple of days exploring the city of Hanoi, we took a three hour bus trip to Halong Bay. We were with a tour group...which always makes things more interesting. The bus driver drove like a maniac and my Mom was a little freaked out...as was I. My sister seemed fine - probably because she has adapted to the way people drive over there... after 8 years of living in Bangkok.

We finally arrived and the whole tour group piled out of the bus. We were staying two nights on a "Junk" boat called "The Pinta Gold Cruise." Halong bay was beautiful! We took a smaller boat to get to our lovely ship. As soon as we got on the boat, Lyle and I went to check out our room. Much to our surprise, we found rose petals sprinkled on our twin beds. I thought it was a nice touch, however, I was a little worried that we signed up for a "romantic love cruise" by mistake.
Turns out, it was a normal cruise and just a standard way of welcoming guests.
On the second day, Lyle and I were talked into going on a leisurly kayaking trip. We both pretended to be kayaking pros... which slapped us in the face about 20 minutes into paddling.
We ended up getting stuck going against a really strong current in a BAT CAVE... not cool.
The tour guide had to switch kayaks with Lyle in order to get us both out safely.
Scary stuff!
No more kayaking in Vietnam for the two of us.
After two days of eating, eating, and more eating we were ready to roll off the ship.
My Mom loved the early morning wake up procedure:
6:45 a.m. -the engine starts
6:46 a.m.- A.C. was turned off
7:00 a.m.- be seated for breakfast

...her room was right next to the engine room so, between the noise and steamy quarters, she was forced to get up.
Of course, this was so funny at the time, for Lyle and I.
Mom referred to the mornings on The Pinta Gold as "the bataan death march."
Don't ask my Mom to rate the cruise...it wasn't really what she expected.

Meeting time...

On my first day of meetings, I made sure to dress like a professional young woman - I even wore my hair in a bun. I was nervous that (because of my age) I wouldn't be taken seriously in my series of meetings. I arrived very nervous, and about 10 minutes early. This meeting was in a custom tailoring shop for women, in a large building with many other stores. The lady I was supposed to meet with was not there, and I was soon informed that she would not be there until 11 am. Feeling slightly discouraged, we left to kill some time until the meeting. We went back to the tailor shop on time. However, when we arrived, the woman was there but said she was "not feeling well." She kept repeating herself, saying that she felt very sick - with face in hands.
This was a little uncomfortable because I didn't really know what I could say or do to make things better. She finally asked me what I was interested in doing and I told her... I was starting a women's clothing line and needed to find manufacturers who specialize in silks.
She got on the phone, & within minutes started calling people she knew who did this. After about 15 minutes of listening to her ramble in Thai, she passed the phone to me.
I said, "hello" and got an identical response of: "hello?" from a man on the line...
This continued back and forth several times until I asked if they were manufacturers, and if so, could I meet with them.
I was confused because when the woman passed me her phone she didn't explain who was on it. We set up a meeting with our new contact the very same day. My sister Lyle's driver took us to the next meeting because it was further outside of Bangkok and we did not want to get lost.
We arrived on time and waited about an hour and a half in a small room full of beautiful silk coats.
My Mom, sister Lyle, began to get a bit nervous because we were in there for so long... but sure enough the owners arrived.
We established what we wanted to do and I explained some of my designs, in order to have samples made. After hours and hours of discussing everything, I left my second meeting. I waited about a week and I had another meeting to see the first samples and discuss other orders of business. My brother-law, Pete came with me to this meeting because not only is he a well established "business man," but he speaks Thai. His Thai was essential to my business meeting because he could figure out if we were on the same page and how we were going to proceed. My first set of samples were pretty much perfect, and I was so excited to see my ideas come to real life... without sewing them myself for once.

It was official, I found the people that I would be working with. After several meetings (about 4 to 6 hours each), we went over every detail - inch by inch - of each design for my Holiday and Spring collection!

The trip over to Bangkok and arrival

My mom...what a trooper, that woman can do anything. She is terrified of flying, but was a cool cucumber the entire way without taking meds or drinking vino. We flew from Pensacola to Atlanta (45 minutes), Atlanta to Tokyo (13.5 hours-a swat team of health officials inspected the entire plane to make sure we didn't have Swine Flu), and Tokyo to Bangkok (7.5 hours) and arrived in Bangkok around midnight.

Yay we are there! Right??

As soon as we got off the plane, we were informed that our luggage was lost... possibly gone. After hours & hours of no sleep, multiple feedings that consisted of things like rubbery/wet ham sandwiches...I started to cry. After circling the luggage carousels like a crazy lady, numerous times, I slowly exited the airport feeling defeated. The man at the airport told us that our luggage would arrive possibly that night. But it didn't.

And it did not arrive the next night... or the next.

So what did we do? We headed to to DKNY.

I needed to find something to wear to my meeting - and surely I couldn't wear my plane "uniform." My mom and I were starting to feel a bit gross.

We found some professional gear at DKNY (that we didn't really want), but were forced to buy due to our circumstances. The night before my first meeting I was so nervous that I couldn't really sleep.

Sure enough our luggage arrived that night!! Yay! I had contacts instead of my colorful/tacky glasses for the meeting!

The beginning of Smitten by Smith

My name is Smith Sinrod, and I just started a new clothing line called Smitten by Smith.

I never really thought I would be a "blogger," but what do you know...here I am blogging.

A little bit about myself: I recently graduated from The University of Alabama, where I majored in Apparel Design. Last summer, I lived in New York City and interned for Mary Howard Studio. Mary Howard is an incredible set designer responsible for (pretty much) every advertisement in Vogue. I loved working for her because I was able to really get close to many aspects of the true fashion world. My job often consisted of shopping for props, organizing the studio, and sometimes helping on set. After this internship I knew that I wanted to start my own business, just like Mary had started her own set design company.

Before I graduated, I set up my Smitten LLC to make things more official before I entered "the real world."

My older sister Lyle lives in Bangkok, Thailand with her three boys and husband, Peter. Once I decided I was going to actually go through with everything (and my parents approved of my future plans), I booked a plane ticket to Bangkok. I started researching manufacturers, and scheduled meetings if their information looked promising. I graduated, and within 5 days I was off to Thailand with my mom, Allison and sister, Lyle.