Cozbi
Since I started this blog, I’ve been lucky enough to visit a lot of small boutiques, meet their owners and talk clothes and fashion. My recent trip to New York was no different.
My goal was to find a really unique, small, and out of the way cool boutique and only spend money on clothing that I felt I couldn’t find anywhere except at this store and only in New York.
On my first day out, thanks to one of my oldest friends Michelle, I found the snowflake of boutiques in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, Cozbi. As we walked in, we were greeted by the owner, Cozbi A. Cabrera.
Cabrera is a tall, statuesque, dark-skinned beauty. She was wearing one of her own creations, the “must have” dress for the summer season; made of white eyelet, under which she wore a soft cotton white slip. I was taken.
Her clothes are the ultimate in classical femininity. The designs are sexy because they are cut and tailored to fit a woman’s body perfectly. All handmade in Brooklyn. Most of her dresses are in either Jackie Onassis style or shift dresses in prints as bold as Pucci, but with a distinctly African twist.
I tried things on, and asked her to hold my favorites. I needed to think. We went back to Michelle’s apartment to check the Cozbi website. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Parsons School of Design. She began her career making handmade collectible cloth dolls called Muñecas; dolls in Spanish. The dolls are collectors favorites and have been featured on Oprah. Her heritage is Honduran. She is the illustrator of the picture book Beauty, Her Basket which Publishers Weekly called “a quiet treasure” in a starred review.
After much debate, calls to my fashion guru Jamie, many hours of shopping/shmying around Brooklyn, the lower East side, NoLita and Soho, I ended up back where I started. I bought a dress at Cozbi. It fits like a glove. It’s one-of-a-kind. It makes me feel good to support women like Cozbi Cabrera. I wish I lived closer. My husband is probably glad that we don’t.
http://www.cozbi.com/page1.html