When Camilyn Leavitt, founder of Camilyn Beth, was invited to 16 weddings in just over a year in 2012, she decided to begin making the dresses she’d wear herself. Leavitt attended school for fashion design, but had left the design industry to work as a creative director for several years. However, posting these dresses on social media brought her back to the fashion world—a small boutique in New Orleans requested to see her designs and then made a 32-piece dress order.
“I decided I was just going to sew all the dresses myself,” says Leavitt. Inspired by that order, she began building the Camilyn Beth brand and selling dresses wholesale to boutiques around the United States from her studio in the Mira Mar building in Downtown Sarasota.
The 2020 pandemic led Leavitt to reroute—she began selling online and directly to customers to adapt to lockdowns and changing shopping habits. “ I love the business more than ever before, now that we are not doing wholesale. When we were selling to stores, it always felt like I was trying to match what the store wanted,” she says. “Now I feel like we get to tell the story of Camilyn Beth and create my classic style for dresses. And classic is wonderful because it’s sustainable. You can wear them over and over again.”…