Sealed with a Kiss

One of the hottest fashion trends this season is a kiss. Kiss lips are a love-fueled icon that speak of feminine strength and romance. They're sweet, sexy, sassy and fun.

The lipstick-coated lips can stand alone or become part of a greater, kiss-covered pattern. This season you'll find kisses everywhere: on dresses, bags, wrists, necks and even umbrellas.

It's enough to make you swoon. But if you just want to add a simple kiss to your wardrobe, try our kiss lips keyring, available now at www.gloriaduchin.com.

2013 Fashion and Color Trends: Miami

It's a new year and a new evolution of style and color. This year, we toured America and collected hot, new fashion trends from our native land. From Miami to New York over to the west coast hubs of Los Angeles and Portland, these four cities are Meccas of influence in art, pop culture and fashion.

Our 2013 trends are inspired by more than the clothes and architecture of these locales, but by the people themselves, their unique culture and attitudes. Together, they represent America, and the melting pot of community and design that makes our country so unique.

To begin our blog tour of trends, we head South, to the vibrant and free-wheeling Miami.

Quick-tempo, Latin music blares at oceanside parties where casual is classy when it's painted in bright hues and large floral prints. Fabrics are light and breezy, flattering figures without clinging to the skin. At the club, short sun dresses are paired with long, bare legs and high-heeled sandals. In the office, a floral jacket is worn with billowing red slacks. The lifestyle is sexy. It's fun. It's relaxed, and it's adventurous.

Embrace the Miami trend by being bold and carefree. Pair a floral pattern with another floral pattern. Paint your bedroom a bright blue. Step into a pair of hot pink heels or hang a pink flamingo ornament on your Christmas tree.

Pretty in Peach!

Vibrant, elegant and playful, coral and peach shades have always influenced spring and summer fashion. This year they’re becoming a big trend thanks to the beautiful looks on the catwalk, the range of coral pieces on the red carpet, and the constant photos of celebrities like Emily Blunt wearing the look. Coral and peach are great shades to try out this summer as they add a pop of color to your wardrobe without being too loud, not to mention they’re universally flattering.

Be on the lookout for our new sandal ornaments this Christmas season. Our fancy peep-toe sandal, accented with Swarovski crystals, makes a perfect hostess gift for a get-together with your girlfriends. And our crystal-accented flip-flop ornament will add a cool summer vibe to any Christmas tree.

Madison Avenue

This is the last of our 2012 trees, and certainly one of our favorites. Our Madison Avenue trend is inspired by the Mad Men craze that is not only dominating the airwaves, but spreading into fashion and home decor. Martini lunches, high-waisted pencil skirts, and tweed suits are all making a comeback in a re-imagined, modern way.

The Madison Avenue color palette includes iconic colors of the 60's: bronze orange and avocado green with pops of fuscia and vibrant blue. We wrapped our tree in thick satin ribbon, intertwining the orange and green into a floppy bow at the top. Blue glitter bulbs peek out from the branches, along with copper glitter stars and matte green bulbs.

From our collections, we chose some of our large, glitter flats in gold, fuscia and silver, tied with brightly-colored satin ribbons. We also selected iconic pieces, including our peep-toe shoe ornament in blue, our martini ornament, glitter wine bucket ornament, silver glitter peace sign and pewter ornaments from our NYC collection.

Packages were wrapped in a mixture of colors, from copper to blue and interspersed with a patterned paper of bright orange flowers. For each package we tied one of our ornaments to the bow which can be engraved on the back and used as a gift tag!

1900's Gothic Victorian

Continuing our re-emerging trends throughout the decades, we're going back in time to the early 1900's where the darkly romantic style of the Victorian age is making waves as a new trend in style, literature, and film also known as Steampunk. Re-imagined lace-up boots, corsets, and of course, icons of the steam-powered age are characteristic of the trend, and as you can see from our Gothic Victorian tree, the color palette includes varying metallics in bronze, pewter and brushed silver, deep purples and burgandys.

For our Steampunk tree, we twisted steel-colored mesh ribbon with burgandy satin through the branches and created a topper combining the two ribbons. To continue the theme, we also used the same ribbons on the packages below. Copper colored birds are clipped to the branches along with copper gears in varying sizes, bunches of small purple bulbs and copper metallic blown glass bulbs.






From our ornament collection, we included our matte gold filigree ornaments with Swarovski crystals, bronze filigree dragonflies, bronze owls, bronze filigree diamond photo frames and our pewter, steam-powered train.

Next week, the 1960's Madison Avenue tree.

1940's Pin-Up

For our annual holiday Trend Intelligence guide this year, we followed trend and fashion across the ages, finding themes and colors that have re-emerged in an updated style. First up, is our 1940's pin-up trend, reminiscent of carefree class and sailor-inspired design.


As you can see from our pin-up tree, the color palette includes cherry reds, vibrant pinks and a combination of blues. The tree-topper is a bow made from wide gingham ribbon and as garland, we used a mixture of red and light teal chiffon.


Filler bulbs come in fun spirals, red pinwheels and large, teal glitter and deep rose bulbs. Throughout the tree, we also used smaller gingham bows to tie everything together.


For our ornaments, we chose icons reminiscent of the era: pink swirl flamingos, blue sailboats, red glitter high-heeled shoes and cherries, and our "kiss" lips tied with red hearts satin ribbon.

For our packages, we found a combination of wrappings: red gift bags stuffed with pink tissue, silver with red and light teal ribbons, and underwater themed paper adorned with one of our sailboat ornaments.

Next week: 1900's Gothic Victorian

Pet Tree

Our pets are part of the family which is why we celebrated all of their love, devotion and companionship with our pet tree this year!

This tree was a lot of fun to decorate. We focused on using bright, solid colors: red, blue and green and accented with white paw print ribbon. For garland we used a length of chain. For decorations, furry mouse toys and rope bones nestled in the branches.

As far as traditional ornaments, we used our collection of pet photo frames, including our: blue glitter fishbowl photo frame, our red glitter hydrant photo frame, and our red and green glitter Santa Paws frames. All of them with photos of the Gloria Duchin animal family!

In addition to our photo ornments, we also adorned the tree with our pewter woof bone and meow paw ornaments and an assortment of green, red and blue glitter paws.

No tree is complete without gifts underneath and for our pet tree we put together a special assortment using stainless steel pet bowls as gift baskets, stuffed with colored tissue, wrapped in paw print cellophane and tied with "I heart my dog" satin ribbon. As a special package accent, we tied on one of our silvertone glitter paw ornaments that can also be used as a keyring.

Next week: Our Pin-Up tree!