Luck be a Lady
Sorellas Boutique is the perfect place for all of your festival finds.
March in New Orleans explodes with events and opportunities to dress and impress. Every weekend is filled with fashionable occasions to costume, cocktail and cause chaos. We begin with Mardi Gras; roll straight into St. Patrick’s Day; and then start the spring cultural and festival season. Pace yourself, because this will be absolutely exhausting for all social butterflies. Yet with a tiny bit of outfit and costume prep and luck, you can survive and thrive. ALG found just the space and place to dress you for a magical March.
Day in and day out I am overstimulated with fashion, lifestyle and retail images. Part of my job is staying ahead of the trends and keeping up with current movements. However, I get bored when it begins to look monotonous and vanilla. Particularly in the boutique retail market, it seems as if everyone is catering to the same clientele — those with the same style. Store after store has a white couch, a wall of crazy wall paper for Instagram selfies, a vase of white flowers or succulents and a rack of rompers and jumpers. Give me something exciting and mesmerizing, even dreamlike.
The End of the Rainbow
Walking into Sorellas Boutique on Metairie Road, which opened in December, is a like landing in a pot of gold. The space is beautifully curated with amusing and fascinating vintage pieces at incredible price points intertwined with new, contemporary clothing lines and home goods. There’s everything from exotic caftans and rock group tees to dainty dresses and Mad Men-worthy bar carts and intricate treasures that you never knew you needed but now cannot live without. Bright and whimsical with gold accents, it truly is like finding treasure.
Fashion Family Tree
Farrah Lefort, owner of Sorellas, drew inspiration from her rich family history and her affection for her three sisters. Her youngest sister Victoria, store manager, has an eye for styling and fashion. Farah’s other two sisters, although not employed at Sorellas, are a great resource and help contribute to the overall vibe of the boutique. “The name Sorellas, is my spin on the word ‘sisters’ in Italian,” Lefort says. “We are a big and close Italian family.”
Lefort’s passion of vintage stemmed from her obsession of digging through family members’ closets and collecting old family photos. “I always call myself ‘the family archivist,’” she says. Lefort describes her great-grandmother as being very glamorous and having an old Hollywood style. She adored looking at photographs of her great-grandmother in the 40s and 50s in New Orleans. Her grandmother, Vita, lived in southern California in the 1960s and Lefort grew up gathering photos of Vita’s incredible Bohemian chic wardrobe. “Occasionally she would give me something from her closet, or I received a piece from my granny’s costume jewelry drawer.” Lefort’s vintage fascination also expanded from being involved in childhood theater. Her mother would help research characters and historic periods for her roles. “We had a lot of fun studying fashions from different eras,” Lefort says.
A piece of clothing can be labled as vintage if it is 20 years from the current date back into the 1920s. Anything prior to 1920 is considered antique. Lefort travels to various cities, like Austin and Portland, to shop markets, estate sales and other vintage boutiques. “I favor the West Coast and find the clothing is better preserved in regions that experience fewer natural disasters,” she says. Buying vintage should be like buying any piece of fashion— when you look at it or try it on, it should excite you.
Lefort’s Tips and Tricks for Vintage Fashion
1. Try everything on. Sizing is very different from today’s current clothing.
2. Scour the vintage racks and markets for designers/labels that are still relevant, but purchase them at a fraction of current costs.
3. Styling vintage creates very unique looks. Pair vintage blouses with mini-skirts and vintage dresses with modern jackets.
Visit Sorellas to build your March wardrobe ensembles for all of the crazy, wonderful events this March. Whether you’re hitting the parade route, hanging out in the Irish Channel or attending City Park’s Lark in the Park, Sorellas will leave you uniquely and affordably styled.
Sorellas Boutique
200 Metairie Road
(504) 265-0011
Get lucky and go shopping!
–Aimée Gowland, ALG Style