Made in St. Louis: Kid feedback helps perfect clothing line

Starting at home • Although Thomas-Morgan has a degree in fashion design, it was the birth of her daughter that was the impetus for the design line. When she started making dresses for Lyra, “I received lots of compliments and questions on where I got them, so I decided to start the line. It can be very difficult to find American-made children’s clothing at a reasonable price, and I’ve found that many of the cheap children’s clothing that’s produced overseas aren’t very well made and raise a lot of ethical issues for me. I wanted my line to fill the hole in the market for parents looking for well-made, reasonably priced clothes for their children that they can feel good about purchasing.”

picture: online formal dresses

Made to order • Everything Thomas-Morgan makes is made to order. Customers go to the website and select the style (they have 15 styles for boys and girls). Then select from 30 colors. Then select size, but Thomas-Morgan says she can adjust any measurements for the hard-to-fit kid. She also does custom work, such as flower girl dresses, costumes and special occasion pieces. And “pretty much everything, from design to production to photos, is done here in St. Louis. I hand make each piece in my studio in Shrewsbury.” Her line was recently a finalist in the Martha Stewart American Made awards.

Remembering her grandmother • Thomas-Morgan named her company after her grandmother, Vivian Hillen. “She passed a few months before I started working on the line, and I wanted to honor her and all that she meant to me,” she says. Grandma would always “let me play dress up in her makeup, jewelry and square dancing outfits; take me shopping and out to tea for my birthday; and was always impeccably dressed, even in her 90s. She was so full of life and a strong woman.”

Kid-approved • “Lyra is a big influence on my designs. She’s one of my fit models and everything passes her approval in the development stage.” When Thomas-Morgan gets ready to design, she thinks about what pieces her collection needs, what she can’t find in stores and what kids want to wear. Then she designs a sample and lets her daughter or her friend’s son (Liam Haines of Edwardsville) wear it. “I see how easily she can move, how she responds to it and see how it wears throughout the day. I even check how easily my husband can get her dressed in the pieces.” The kids give her feedback and she might make adjustments based on that. “They are great helpers.”

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