SAN FRANCISCO – In the wedding scene of the recently released movie “In the Mix,” R&B singer Usher’s co-star Emmanuelle Chriqui appears in a strapless, white silk gown with a full skirt – a flattering confection Bay Area fashion enthusiasts may recognize as one of local designer Colleen Quen’s creations.
Quen calls the gown “Georgia O’Keefe” because she was inspired by the famous painter in making the dress – part of her growing permanent collection of designs she never intends to drop. Departing from industry practice, instead of creating a new line of gowns and cocktail dresses each season that are supplanted by the next crop, Quen keeps her designs around.
It’s a strategy seemingly at odds with Quen’s interest in broadening her collection’s appeal and opening salons in Paris and New York. Quen, 40, a veteran local sportswear designer who worked for labels like Eileen West, struck out on her own six years ago. She sells only 100 garments a year, including one-of-a-kind gowns for clients.
“It’s a personal business. I have more control. I can be more creative and create my own path,” said Quen, who views her designs as architectural sculpture with feminine lightness. Last week, she learned she is one of three finalists to be Fashion Group International’s 2006 Women’s Ready to Wear Designer, part of its Rising Star Awards, to be given Jan. 26 in New York.
Quen’s creations, which cost $1,000 to $2,500 for cocktail dresses and $2,500 to $35,000 for evening gowns, have quickly garnered a local following among women in the arts, as well as executives, socialites, debutantes and brides. “In the Mix” is the designer’s first film credit; actress Geena Davis, model Tyra Banks and British film producer Julia Verdin own Quen designs.
San Francisco Asian Art Museum director Emily Sano, ballet general director Lesley Koenig and Pamela Rosenberg, general director of the city’s opera who’s soon to join the Berlin Philharmonic, own Quen designs, as does Cheryl Baxter, president of the Opera Guild.
Patricia Sprincin, who oversees San Francisco Symphony’s volunteers, has 10 Quen creations, including a Georgia O’Keefe dress in bright orange satin. “Her gowns are fitted beautifully. They are such a statement,” said Sprincin, who also favors Carmen Marc Valvo for evening and wears a lot of Calvin Klein during the day.
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Quen creations make appearances in Alonzo King’s LINES Ballet, the contemporary dance company based here. For King’s high-energy Moroccan ballet, which is touring the U.S. and Europe, Quen fashioned squiggly lavender tutus out of organza shaped by boning at the hemline for the ballerinas and flowing knee-length camel-colored culottes for the shirtless male dancers.
Just over five feet tall, Quen parts her long black wavy hair down the middle. On a recent visit to her new salon, she was wearing a black ribbed turtleneck and a long gray skirt of stretchy wool gabardine covered in rows of black tabs. Its design relates to Quen’s floor-length Chinese Empress evening coat, introduced this year, which is cloaked in rows of shimmering gold silk ribbon tabs. The coat was inspired by the jewelry included in traditional Chinese trousseaux.
While such nods to her heritage pop up in her designs, Quen – a third-generation Bay Area resident – said her main influence is nature, such as the calla lilies that are abundant in Golden Gate Park during the fall and winter. The flower’s seductive trumpet shape is echoed in long-sleeved openings in Quen’s evening coats.
Her signature design element is a flared, four-corner, stand-up collar that frames the décolletage and rises slightly behind the head like a futuristic tiger lily blossom, which is its inspiration. “When you look from the back, there’s movement,” she said.
Quen has used the collar in evening and wedding gowns and in her putty-colored collection of travel dresses named after cities. Banks recently wore Quen’s “Paris” dress with the collar on her talk show.
“Colleen’s attention to detail and the structure are wonderful. I love the colors,” said Banks’ stylist, Leisel Quamie, before a Quen fashion show in August during San Francisco Fashion Week.
Quen makes her patterns by hand and has two in-house seamstresses. She shares her salon and studio with her husband, Rick Lee, an industrial designer, whose furniture is influenced by Italian modernists and is sold in home furnishing boutiques like Sublime in New York’s SoHo. The couple’s airy, two-story home in a former 1908 laundry in San Francisco’s SOMA (South of Market Street) neighborhood has Lee’s furniture grouped with Quen’s gowns on mannequins.
“We wanted to create an ambience of design,” Quen said.
Quen and Lee are now turning their sights outside their studio to Heron Street, where there’s a leather apparel and whip manufacturer on the corner and a youth hostel across the street. They recently commissioned a group of local graffiti artists to cover a brick wall at the end of the dead-end street. To them, it’s all a blank canvas.
“I would love to set up a runway in front and have a fashion show,” Quen said.