To kick off New York Fashion Week, Elaine Turner threw a Texas-sized hoedown at her new store on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Urban cowboys dressed in all black — Stetsons included — served champagne to a large crowd of New Yorkers and Lone Star bloggers in town for the fashion festivities.
"It's our fall launch party, and we decided to hook up with the T.J. Martell Foundation for cancer research because it fits with our brand and our giving-back culture," Turner said. "Ultimately we wanted to bring all these people together. And all these Texans are here for Fashion Week, so it's perfect."
This city is special for the designer and her husband, Jim Turner, because it's where they met. She always dreamed of opening a store here, and although doing business in New York is much more expensive than most other cities, she said it's been great for the Elaine Turner brand, because it puts the newest accessories in front of so many prominent New York fashion editors.
Among those in attendance were Women's Wear Daily senior accessories editor Roxanne Robinson-Escriout; Dallas fashion bloggers Ellen Flowers, Brooke Burnett and Lauren Murphy; Houston blogger Roz Pactor; blogger Mary Seng from Nashville; blogger Jenn Papallatoc from Baton Rouge; blogger Krystal Bennett Faircloth from Tulsa; and New York bloggers Jaci Smith, Kendall Johnson and Shira Rosenbluth.
Also joining in the fun were T.J. Martell Foundation CEO Laura Heatherly; MAC Presents exec Jessica Beutler; Elaine Turner investor Don Jones; Elaine Turner exec Heather McLeskey; Jenna Jackson of Houston-based P & R Productions, which is filming several web films for Turner; and Vincent Quan, associate professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology, who is doing a case study of Turner's success as a fashion entrepreneur.
Haley Berry, Lauren Murphy
