Q&A With Whitney Lundeen

As the mother of two boys, Whitney Lundeen was tired of feeling restricted in her clothing to be the active mother she wanted to be.

“Every day was a battle getting dressed,” Lundeen said. “I wanted to wear cute clothes but so much of the material was dry clean only. I knew that meant I wouldn’t let my son near me if he was eating a banana, and I didn’t want that.”

With limited options available in the market for fashionable clothes that were also mommy appropriate, Lundeen decided to do something about it. In February, she launched Sonnet James, an online boutique that features 12 original dresses made from  indestructible and comfortable fabrics. The dresses have become a hit with women nationwide and today, Lundeen is launching a Kickstarter campaign to help keep up with demand.

Lundeen chatted with me about how Sonnet James came to be and her reaction to its success…



First of all, what a unique name! How did you come up with it? Sonnet and James were the two girl names I had in mind during my two pregnancies. Each of my boys was a surprise so I was ready with both a boy and a girl name. I combined the two names and created Sonnet James. The brand is sort of the daughter I never had.



When did you first get the idea to create Sonnet James? It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment of conception because it’s something I had been thinking about for a while. I read a book at Anthropologie one day about dresses from the editor of British Vogue and that was the moment I knew that the dresses I wanted to wear really were missing from the market.

My brother just graduated from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business so he was here with me every step of the way, from telling him my original idea to actually making the dresses and getting them online. He invited me to every guest lecture at the business school and after hearing from people like Mickey Drexler of J. Crew and Tory Burch, I knew I had to try it. I wasn’t Ivy League material like the students surrounding me at the school but neither were Mickey or Tory. What they both had was confidence and a strong vision. I knew I had both of those.



What were the initial steps like in designing and creating the dresses? I had $5,000 in my bank account from interior design work I had done over the past few years. I used this money to buy some pattern books on Amazon, a Serger and a sewing machine. Sewing and I have never gotten along well but it’s necessary for what I wanted to do. After the boys went to bed, I would head downstairs to tweak my patterns, cut the blasted modal fabric (it’s so hard to cut on my kitchen floor) and sew those first dresses. It all came together pretty quickly once I decided that I was going to do it. It was an incredibly fun and huge learning experience.



Have you been surprised by the success Sonnet James has achieved so far? I have been completely overwhelmed. It was on January 1 of this year that I set a goal to make and sell 10 dresses. My brother laughed at my goal and suggested I be slightly more ambitious. So I bumped it up to make and sell 100 dresses in 2013. Soon after the site went live, all the dresses were sold out and my e-mail was flooded with messages from women and mothers all over the country asking for more sizes. It’s really exciting to see that there were others who recognize this void in the fashion industry. There are lots of mothers who want to give their children the very best they’ve got and feel cute and comfortable doing it. Moms want to be fun, happy and playful and these dresses represent that idea and support mothers in this journey. This is what the success of Sonnet James tells me.

For more information, visit www.sonnetjames.com or check out its Kickstarter campaign.