This is the first in a series of sponsored posts where we look behind the scenes at American clothing company, Karen Kane.

Last week Greg and I spent a day at Karen Kane Headquarters in Vernon, California, touring their design rooms, factory floors, despatch area and all the satellite sections that make the operation flow and function (go backstage to find out how this all came about).

Karen Kane is a family based business with Karen herself as head of design. Husband Lonnie is in charge of production and finance, and eldest son Michael is director of marketing. Michael also has the challenging task of launching the company’s online store in July.

Karen Kane custom built their premises 18 years ago and they are HUGE (150,000 square feet). They produce five labels (Karen Kane, Karen Kane Women’s, Karen by Karen Kane, Fifteen Twenty, and Red 23). Karen herself designs for all of them, together with her lead designer Myung, who has been working with Karen for twenty years.

Greg and I were greeted warmly by Karen and Michael at reception. Karen was casual yet uber chic in skinny jeans, black silky blouse (her own design), wedged sandals and gorgeous chunky silver jewelry. Michael looked hip and cool in tapered grey jeans, slim-fit button down shirt and industrial boots. Right from the outset I knew that this was going to be a fabulous day.

We headed directly to a conference room that contained the final samples and info sheets for the next six months of delivery. Michael had laid out beautiful design illustrations and photos of fashion shoots on the conference room table. Karen Kane actually shoots the photos for their look books in this room. I was itching to look through the rails of final samples, but restrained myself until later.

As I expected, my buying days came flooding back as soon as I walked into the Karen Kane building, and before long my head was exploding with questions. Over the next few hours Karen would answer every one of them with with great insight, humble grace, infinite patience, and a confident dignity that one rarely sees in the Rag Trade. Without question, Karen is a leader at her game.

We started in the “Work Room”, which is where Karen’s design process starts. It is filled with trims, swatches of fabrics, drawings, sketches, photographs, outfits for modeling shoots, and all sorts of other things that fuel those creative juices. Karen has other designers that create final computer aided sketches of clothing and outfits, but for Karen, it’s still about a small sketchpad and an old fashioned pencil. She sketches her ideas and sticks them on big white boards with swatches. After mulling over her ideas and tweaking the sketches, she’ll have the designs sampled up in the Sample Room. Once that happens, the design receives an official style number in red ink.

Karen sketches up many, many designs, but only the best make it onto her big white work boards. The designs that don’t make the cut are not discarded, but stuck to the edge of a large table just in case she needs to return to them later. They are thrown away at the end of a retail season.

Next we went to Karen’s office, passing several important support functions on the way. In one room, two fabulous ladies were ticketing and assembling the final samples for Karen Kane’s nationwide merchandising staff. We passed the fabric ordering room, where it’s a full time job to order the right fabric for garment production (the lovely lady below surrounded by fabric swatches). We also passed the Human Resources, Customer Service and Accounting Departments, and everyone was as friendly as can be. It was great to see an overview of the support functions that make it all happen, and a reminder that the clothing manufacturing business has millions of moving parts.

Karen doesn’t spend too much time in her own office (that’s beautiful Karen sitting at her desk), because she spends most of it in the Work Room, Sample Room and in other parts of the factory overseeing the design process and attending to the hundreds of queries that come up in a day. Michael told us that it’s not uncommon to see a queue of 20 people waiting to speak to Karen at any point in the building.

Clothing designers tend to work around 9 months in advance of products hitting the store shelves and Karen is currently designing for Spring 2012 (Spring 2012 Fashion Week is in early September). She collects fabric swatches and ideas and puts them into separate drawers that are each associated with a particular month of delivery. And yes, there is a separate room and additional staff required just to manage the process of sample fabrication and trim selection because Karen Kane designs and manufactures five labels.

While Karen’s design focus is one season, the company actually juggles three seasons at once. They are currently designing for Spring 2012, producing Fall 2011 and managing the sales for Spring & Summer 2011. Although I loved hearing about the beginning of the design process in the Work Room and seeing all the support funcitons, my favourite part of the day was what came next: the Sample Room. We’ll cover that later today, so stay tuned.

This is the first in a series of posts sponsored by Karen Kane:

1. Design at Karen Kane (this post)
2. Karen Kane’s Sample Room
3. Clothing Production at Karen Kane
4. Karen Kane’s Trim and Dispatch Departments
5. Karen Kane the Family Business

For more information you can follow @Karen_Kane on Twitter or like their page on Facebook.

Thank you very much for participating in our recent survey on YLF and Facebook integration. There were more than 200 responses and we thought we’d share the results.

Our main takeaways are that half of you would at least consider sharing some of your YLF activity on Facebook, but that the other half want to keep their YLF and Facebook worlds completely separate. So while some Facebook features might be well received, they would have to be optional.

Another thing that came through was the concern that some of YLF would “move” to Facebook. Well, we want to put your mind at rest that nothing we do would diminish the amount of content we put here on youlookfab.com. Any use of Facebook would be to amplify, augment or share what is already here on YLF.

Here are the detailed results.

Which of these statements best describes your participation on YLF?

How often do you use Facebook on average?

If you do use Facebook, how would you like YouLookFab and Facebook to work together?

More than 30 people also elaborated on their answers or provided ideas using the optional text field at the end of the survey. This input was very interesting, full of wonderful ideas and great insights. Some of the concerns that were expressed will really help us to make the right decisions. We will be looking at it closely if and when we work on anything related to Facebook.

After 5 years of posting daily content on YLF, some of my early entries on “smart casual dressing” are still amongst the most popular. So I thought it was time for an update. At its simplest, smart casual means dressing up jeans. It’s dressier than casual, but not quite as formal as business casual because the denim dresses down the outfit. The beauty of smart casual is that in today’s age of casualization, it will take you just about anywhere.

Smart Casual is versatile, easy and flop proof, and it’s completely formula driven:

Denim + dressy top (or dress, or skirt) + dressy shoes + dressy accessories

ANYONE can cook up a killer smart casual outfit given the right ingredients.

• Denim: Jeans are the obvious choice in any colour and silhouette. Blue, black, grey, white and cream jeans are no brainers, but with coloured denim being big this season, that can work too. Skinny, straight leg, bootcut, trouser and wide leg jeans are all fabulous. If you don’t like to wear jeans, never fear! Substitute jeans for a denim skirt, or layer a denim jacket over a dressy dress or dressy skirt and top combination. For the more fashion forward and daring, there are more fringe denim bottom choices like denim shorts shorts, bermudas and cropped denim pant styles that can absolutely be dressed up to look smart casual. Take your pick.
• Top: Think dressier blouses, button down shirts, knitwear and knit tops instead of T-shirts. Do not be afraid to add sparkle, glitz and super formal tops to jeans or a denim skirt. Do not be afraid of adding a denim jacket to a sparkly dress. If you’re matching a skirt or dress ensemble with a denim jacket, make sure that the pieces are smarter than casual.
• Jacket: This is an optional but effective extra for smart casual outfits with jeans and denim skirts. The magical powers of a jacket can take an outfit from drab to fab. For smart casual, you’re after a dressier jacket. It needn’t be super tailored, but a casual jacket, although fab with denim, is not smart casual unless the rest of your outfit is very dressy. Jackets can mean anything from blazers and trapeze silhouettes, to boyfriend cuts, cropped styles, leather looks, trench coats and wool coats. T-shirts are generally not part of this dress code, but layer a fabulous jacket over a good quality tee and you’ve made it work.
• Dressy Shoes: Footwear goes a long way to finishing off any outfit and for smart casual, its no different. Think dressy shoes, either flat or heeled. Sandals, pumps, oxfords, boots, booties, ballet flats, mary janes – any shoe at all as long as it’s not a casual shoe.
• Dressy accessories: A dressier handbag completes the look. Jewelry is not a must, and these days I am happy to leave the house with only watch, wedding ring, specs and handbag. But adding a statement piece of jewelry will further dress up your outfit. Necklaces are a great option as are dressier scarves. Earrings, rings, brooches and bracelets are also fab. If you’re a belt gal, add a dressy belt.

Because darker denim is definitely dressier than faded denim, I used to suggest sticking to darker denim washes for smart casual. But when the other components are dressy, I think that faded denim can be a cool and unexpected in a smart casual ensemble. It’s a little tricky to get right though so if you are at all in doubt, stick to darker denim washes.

I spend half my life is smart casual attire because it’s my favourite dress code, and because denim is acceptable in my line of work. So it shouldn’t be surprising that many of the outfits I have posted on YLF are smart casual. Below are some of my favourites.

Today we bring back Tarzy (Tara), a fabulous forum member who’s been with YLF for five years. Tara is a talented writer and super divine gal who hails from Manhattan, but has lived in LA for many years. As a New Yorker at heart, Tara wrote about last year’s NYC gathering and had us all in stitches. This time round it’s from her new home town.

Los Angeles, also called the City of Angels, is known for many things including bright sunshine and head-turning celebrities. Last weekend all of those elements were present at the LA YLF get-together, when we received a visit from a stylish seraph from Seattle – the lovely Angie Cox, creator of YLF, and fashion muse to all of us on the site.

We had arranged to meet in Old Town Pasadena because of its abundance of shopping and restaurants, and luckily, the day turned out to be perfect SoCal weather – bright and beautiful. Even so, it wasn’t nearly as beautiful as Angie herself.

Waiting to pick her up at her hotel, I was wondering what Angie would think of LA’s super casual style, when a slender woman with short spiky hair strode over to me. I’m not exaggerating when I say Angie’s smile lit up the lobby, and heads turned to look at her – quite an accomplishment in a town where every waitress is a gorgeous starlet.

Angie has that same kind of appeal – she stands out in a crowd. She was wearing a bright midi-length, multi-panel skirt that was cut close to the body at the waist and hips, then floated out around her as she moved. Her skirt, featuring shades of pink and purple with bits of cream and yellow, was topped with a cropped denim jacket. She wore her signature pearls in champagne, carried a gold satchel, and her famous fussy feet featured open toe neutral shoes with a walk-friendly heel. I loved the way Angie’s denim jacket was the perfect touch of SoCal casual, while her skirt took the outfit up several notches.

We were quickly joined by MaryK, our own “business bombshell” on the forum, who looked cool and casual in white jeans with a bright green and white print top. Mary is as bubbly and fun in person as she is on the forum, and the three of us made our way to Zara, where we found five more YLF ladies waiting patiently.

Angela (Cloud9) chose her forum name well, because she’s as sweet as an angel, with a shy smile and gentle manner that makes her instantly likable. She was a picture perfect MOTG in a denim skirt, knit top, fab silver sandals and sparkly statement necklace.

Rachel (Rae) is like the gorgeous younger sister of your best friend, and you try to be jealous because she’s wearing tiny short shorts and has silky long hair, but she’s super smart and funny and she completely wins you over.

Lily (Karli) is grounded and friendly, and looked effortlessly stylish in a black and white skirt and denim jacket, with a pop of color from her utterly fabulous yellow Kate Spade handbag that I almost “accidentally” took home with me.

DesmoApril (April) has the most beautiful deep blue eyes, which were set off perfectly by the blue in her blouse – no coincidence, because she really knows her stuff. Incredibly generous and helpful, she gave spot-on advice about various items that were considered for purchase. It’s no surprise such a smart cookie works in publishing, although the fact that she works on magazines about motorcycles, and also owns and rides them was a fun discovery.

Finally, ChewySpaghetti (Khris) drove all the way from the desert and still managed to arrive looking stylishly cool and casual, from her fun chocolate colored Cons to her fabulous tortoise shell glasses. Shy in person, Kris exudes a caring personality and can’t hide her sensitive, artistic soul.

We all headed into Zara, sticking close to Angie like baby ducks, noting what items she was drawn to. Most of the others were too courteous to pester Angie for her opinion, but I knew I wouldn’t have the opportunity to shop with a pro again, so I boldly solicited advice. I spotted a casual knit blazer that filled a huge hole in my wardrobe (casual coverage in warm weather) and got thumbs up for the cream color. Rachel found an amazing butterfly print top, and Angie was rhapsodic about the bright orange featured throughout the store.

Leaving Zara, we walked down the street toward H&M, with a slight detour into a pet store. The loving mama of a furbaby, Angie bought a tasty treat for Yorkie Rosie back in Seattle.

As we headed to the next store, an attractive man on the street literally stopped in his tracks and told Angie she “looked like a movie star.” The rest of us instinctively closed in like a protective entourage, while the admirer complemented her outfit. An embarrassed Angie laughed it off, and we quickly scooted into H&M, where Karli found a fabulous scarf, MaryK bought a blazer, and Khris tried on lots of tops and dresses.

Next, MaryK led us to a small boutique she loves, and beamed with pride when Angie was smitten with several handbags. She brought home too?

Still going strong, we made our way over to the GAP, where Karli, MaryK and I scooped up the same blue knit blazer at 40% off the sale price!

Moving on, we were drawn into the Kate Spade shop by the beautiful handbags, and MaryK scored an amazing jacket, half-off, that fit her like a glove.

Time for lunch! We walked to Chado Tea House, where we met the man behind YLF. Greg sported a casual purple striped shirt over a black tee, jeans, and his signature no lace shoes. Not many men would willingly endure lunch with eight women, at a tea house no less, but Greg was a real trooper, and took time to talk to each of us individually.

After lunch, we posed for pictures outside, and it was obvious we were having a blast – a passing woman was compelled to stick her foot into our group “guess the owner of the shoe” shot!

After strolling past a few more boutiques, a quick look around J. Crew, and another visit to Zara, it was obvious no one wanted to end the day just yet, so Lily suggested we get some coffee. Total strangers just a few hours earlier, we sat and talked like lifelong friends for a bit longer, until finally, reluctantly, it was time to say our goodbyes.

If you ever have a chance to attend a YLF gathering – try to do so. It’s not just about the shopping, although that’s a wonderful part of it. It’s more about meeting people in real life you’ve come to know through the online forum, and getting to know them beyond the questions about shoes and handbags. I feel I have six wonderful new friends, not to mention two new blazers. Thank you, Angie and Greg, for visiting Los Angeles.

And thank you, Angie, for inspiring us with your personal style and professional advice. You are our very own fashion angel, and we’re all so glad you’ve created this heavenly spot for us to learn and share!