Los Al Designer Breaches the Battlefield of Workplace Fashion

In third grade, Camilla Wright sold her first clothing design: a white t-shirt with pink stripes she sewed herself.

“My friend … wanted it so much, she ordered my shirt,” said the Finland-born designer. “She actually paid me. You know, like $2.”

“I remember being so proud,” Wright added.  

Three decades later, Wright, now a fashion designer, continues what she started as a child with her Los Alamitos-based design business, Soldat Tailoring.

The Huntington Beach resident has had a number of recent triumphs: she unveiled her fall 2013 clothing line in March, she produced a show for the latest Los Angeles Fashion Week, and she just mailed out a sampling of her designs to Elle magazine after the fashion publication asked her for a peek at her work.

Wright said she’s especially thrilled by the Elle request.

“Just the fact that they know I exist is amazing,” Wright said.

Wright, who began work on her Soldat clothing line in 2008 while living in Seal Beach, says her suits are made for the creative woman in business. She named the line after the Swedish word for soldier — Wright is a Swedish-speaking Finn — because, according to Wright, the workplace is like a battlefield and your outfit “is like your uniform.”

“You want to dress up business-type, but not necessarily look like a banker or lawyer. You still want to look like a creative person,” Wright said. “That’s the inspiration behind the line.”

Born in Terjarv, Finland, Wright said she started sewing in elementary school. She made her first outfits for her stuffed animals.

“Sewing has just been part of me,” Wright said. “It’s been a way for me to express myself because I’ve always been a little shy.”

Wright graduated with a bachelor’s degree in design from the Turku Design College in Finland, and after internships at a made-to-measure shop in England and a small design shop in the US, she landed her first assistant designer job in New York City in 1997.

For more than a decade, she worked for a number of fashion companies, and her designs were used in Mudd, Leis and Skechers lines.

But, something was bothering her, Wright said. Yes, she was designing, but mostly by sitting in front of the computer, using programs to create clothing. She said she felt distanced from “the touch of the fabric.”

“I was very far removed from the whole hands-on experience, and I wanted to get back to hands-on creating,” Wright said.

So, after her husband, who was then in the Coast Guard, was transferred to the west coast in 2008, she started Soldat in her Seal Beach home.

From that August start date, Soldat has grown to a design studio in Los Alamitos, where she occasionally hires freelance seamstresses. But she still does most of the sewing.

Wright, who releases two lines a year with about eight outfits per release, says she hopes business will keep growing.

“In five years I want to have a little factory going on here where I’m constantly working on new orders and collections," Wright said.

She also hopes to add more tailors and wants to have her clothing line featured in boutiques and high end stores in America and Europe.

Right now customers can buy her work at Nimli, at the Los Angeles-based Echo Park Independent Co Op and at Etsy.

Wright lives with her husband in Huntington Beach and says she hopes to move to Los Alamitos soon.  Her husband plans to start work for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the couple has three children, the oldest in first grade.

She’s already started teaching her children how to sew, too.

“They’re already very interested, and they like to try out the machines,” Wright said. 

For Wright, sewing is still her passion, a craft she hopes she can work on indefinitely.

"A lot of people don’t really know how to sew, which I find really sad,” Wright said. “I feel fashion has become (something) you can just buy so cheaply. ... There’s no pride in what you own.

But she adds, “If you make something, you feel pride in that.”

Her design studio is at 3841 Catalina Street Suite H. Visits are by appointment only and can be made by calling 1-646-361-5842 or emailing holla@soldattailoring.com.

For more information on Soldat, visit http://www.soldattailoring.com or www.facebook.com/soldattailoring. 

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