Hampton Style - May 9, 2008 - a fashion able life

"I'm always thinking about the Hamptons when I design," says fashion designer Shoshanna Lonstein Gruss, adding that she's been coming out here all her life. "When I look for inspiration I think about what I want to wear to the beach, barbecues and lawn parties." Anyone who scans party pages in Manhattan and the Hamptons is by now very familiar with sightings of the olive-skinned beauty at plenty of the aforementioned. She is usually wearing her own designs, which is appropriate since her own fashion needs are what inspires the creation of her namesake label.

The fashion industry has long left a void for women lucky enough to sport enviable curves, and the gap becomes particularly daunting come bikini season. What Shoshanna realized, and decided to monopolize on, is that fashionable options didn't always come in all sizes. She recalls struggling to find clothesthat fit her figure in adolescence when she attended Nightingale, an Upper East Side private school. The petite, buxom maven adds, "clothing was a problemwhen I was growing up. Things didn't fit, or they looked too provocative. I was teased." After graduating from UCLA, she decided to create a more inclusive approach to women's fashion. Ten years ago she launched her namesake line, maximizing on what had already become a first-name-only media phenomenon in New York-Shoshanna becoming as well-known a name as Woody, Madonna or Paris.

Known for her figure-flaunting cuts, the company really began to thrive in 2001 when she launched a line of swimsuits; within months, sales were 10 times the amount of those for her dress line. "Most people were offering four sizes of swimsuits,'' says Gruss. "We offer 12, and we sell tops and bottoms separately.'' She credits some of that success to the fact that she doesn't have a traditional fashion background, freeing her to do things differently. "The idea was born out of frustration with the fashion world and a simultaneous love for clothing," she says. "There just weren't any clothes out there for me. That's hard for a 13-year-old girl and for any woman. The industry designs for one body, and it isn't mine."

"My clothes and designs are an extension of my life. I think that's where my confidence comes from. I believe in these clothes because they come from a very personal place. I want women to celebrate their bodies." Known for her clean, preppy silhouettes, Shoshanna's style still has an edge-a wink-and she is widely considered to represent the new generation of Upper East Side elegance. Like her designs, the effervescent fashionista is chic but effortless; feminine and understated. Her business has continued to evolve in sync with her life. When her daughter, Sienna, was born in 2005, Shoshanna launched a childrenswear line. Now enjoying motherhood and married to Josh Gruss, the designer is interested in more permanent things than she was when she shipped her first collection at the age of 22. She has also developed a liking for the simpler life, especially when she steals away to her East Hampton home. When asked what she enjoys out here, there is no mention of garden galas or the Pink Elephant; Instead, she waxes poetic about spending the day beachcombing with her daughter and cast-fishing off the flats of Shinnecock Bay with her husband, wading out to sandbars on crystalline water. That she can also tell you precisely what she is wearing in these reveries, and how it will end up in a future collection, is just part of her charm-and her success.