From A Couple of Stores to the Silver Screen--And How We Got There

When Linda Lorraine came to Ideas Made Real, she already had this customer.


This customer shops on Haight Street, wears the gloves in the clubs South of Market. We wanted Linda Lorraine to be on Union Street. Union Square.

But we weren't saying, "Bye-bye, who needs you?" We wanted to keep this customer and attract the woman I call this customer’s “upscale cousin,” someone who could afford to buy more than one pair of gloves.

Here’s how we got there.

One of the first steps was creating Linda’s press kit. The well-dressed press kit contains a bio, a brochure, photographs of the product, and “tear sheets”: photocopies of articles that have appeared about your product. At the beginning, there are no tear sheets, so you substitute articles on related products, trends—basically, you’re making the case for why the recipient should take an interest in your product.

Linda already had a bio, so let’s start with the brochure. This is a folding brochure, a nice small size that could be handed out at shows or sent to the media. (Yes, you can still send things, as well as emailing them. People like to hold something in their hands.)

Here’s page one of the brochure I created for Linda. Her competition was cheaply-made gloves from overseas. We wanted our customer to know that a much better choice was available: Linda Lorraine gloves.


We quickly got the San Francisco Bay Guardian write-up.


And Linda started getting into more stores. (She was in three when she came in, none in the areas where her target customers shopped.) One of the first was In/San Francisco, a store in the San Francisco Centre (just off Union Square) devoted to local talent.


Mandy Behbehani included Linda in the write-up of In/San Francisco in the Examiner.


Lourdes Livingston wrote her up in the Chronicle.


I also work with trade media. This is one of the top trade magazines in Linda Lorraine’s field, Accessories.


And networking is so important. The then-fashion editor for SF Weekly, Liz Mechem, noticed Linda Lorraine’s gloves in an insert for their show guide for the Women’s Building Fair (now the Celebration of Craftswomen)


and selected the gloves for this photo shoot for Frisko magazine, “Going Outre on the Town” (I call this the “tall Madonna” shot).


Jo Mancuso included them in the "Whole Bay Catalog."


More SF Weekly photo shoots,




the “People” section of the Chronicle,


and then the cover of The City.






People began to take notice. When I first started talking with Linda, she mentioned that she had often been invited to SF Moda’s parties, that they had bought her gloves, but that they had never written about her. And now? Her work started showing up here,


and here



and, ultimately, they put her work on the cover.


Note that this was just the customer we were trying to attract.

So we were thrilled. But I also knew there was business beyond the Bay for Linda, and so I said, “Let’s not just target local media. Let’s go for Cosmopolitan and Elle.”

Linda said, “Yes. I was thinking of that.”

So I sent out the kit and immediately got a call back from Joanne Knowlton at Cosmopolitan.

“I love the gloves. Send me gloves for a photo shoot.”

Which we did.

And they didn’t get used.

But follow-up is everything. I kept in touch with Joanne, and she ultimately did a four-page shoot of Linda Lorraine gloves. Here are three of those pages.






They also did this shoot.


Elle was next.


And then Joanne Knowlton at Cosmopolitan called one day and said, “We’re doing a shoot on ‘Big Payoffs for Small Purchases.’ Do you have any any reversible gloves?’

“I think we might,” I said.

I will never lie for a client. But I will say, “Maybe.” I will always try to get my client in the door.

So here are those gloves.


The great thing—aside from the shot, which I think is drop-dead gorgeous—is that we had gone from a situation where we were trying to get in the door to one in which they were calling us.

One more thing. As soon as I saw Linda Lorraine’s zebra gloves, the leopard, the houndstooth, I said, “This is Hollywood.” But how to get there?

Remember, Ideas Made Real is all about creativity development. I put on my thinking cap, called someone who had worked for Paramount, we put our heads together, and I created a very small but very powerful ad that went in the directory of the Costume Designers’ Guild in Hollywood. The tag line was a pun on the old Hollywood line, “The Stuff that Dreams are Made of.” Later, Elizabeth Taylor would have “The Fragrance Dreams are Made Of.” Good company, to be sure.


The ad sat there. Linda said, “I’m not placing that ad again.”

I said, “Hang in there, Linda.” I never push advertising. In fact, when I work with people on their marketing, it’s far from the top of the list. But there are times that it’s absolutely the right vehicle, and I knew this was one of those times.

One day the phone rang. It was Warner Brothers. They wanted gloves for Batman Returns.

They didn’t use them.

The phone rang again. Gloves for Richard Gere.

He didn’t like them.

But the phone rang again, and this time it was what you call “paydirt.” On the line was a Los Angeles designer named Nolan Miller, who wanted Linda to create private label gloves for him. And one day Nolan Miller asked Linda to create gloves for Rebecca de Mornay to wear to the Academy Awards. This was the year she won for The Hand that Rocks the Cradle. She was also a presenter that year. She wore Linda Lorraine gloves on national television, syndicated internationally. And Mr. Blackwell, who pans everybody, said Rebecca de Mornay was “simply a vision in white satin.”

Linda’s gloves have since been worn by Joan Collins, Goldie Hawn--the list goes on and on.

We started with a couple of stores, and a vision.

Imagine what we could do for you.

©2011, 2013 Laynie Tzena.