CHARLES AND PATRICIA LESTER.

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In this issue:-

• Christmas present ideas
• This Month’s Clearout rail and special offers
• What’s New for Winter
• Harrods – what’s in stock
• Feature Frock – the bias patchwork skirt
• New Gallery in San Francisco
• Film News
• Newsletter News
• The future of our newsletters
• Website news
• Online shop news
• Email technical issues - are you still waiting for communication from us?
• Mel has had her baby
• Are you buying from outside the United Kingdom?
• Something for everyone
• And the last word......

 

For girls to buy for their friends or for you to pass on ideas to the men in your life!!

We have a vast range of things that make ideal presents. Any of the coats and jackets are ideal as no measurements are required and if a basic dress size is known then things like the bias skirts and basic tops make excellent presents. For the smaller budgets, there is a good selection of scarves and shawls, as well as Georgina’s bead and button jewellery. For the more extravagant or special gift there are some beautiful bed covers, wall hangings and throws as well as the silk and velvet cushions.  The more information you have about size, shape and colour preferences the more specific you can be. And if you require us to guide friends to what you would like - then you can let us know which to hint at as being a good idea and something that you will love.

Cushions and interiors pieces always make fantastic gifts. For more details please get in touch.

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This Month’s
Clearout rail and special offers.


Mega bargain
Satin Devore top – Normally £580
Now £150
More on our Shop on-line

Our Summer Sale was a HUGE success and thank you to all you lovely customers who answered Georgina’s plea to help us create some space. However, despite that we still have some bargains that are on the clearout and apprentice rails. So please come back!
And if you think that you missed all the bargains go visit our
Shop on-line or come to the studios and look to see what we have left. There are still a few treasures waiting for a new home.

We have a collection of beautiful silk outfits which would be ideal for those of you wishing to escape the winter blues and holiday in warmer climes. Cruise outfits suitable for travelling across the globe.

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Imagine winter parties full of glitz and glamour, crystal chandeliers, in Renaissance gilded halls. Baroque splendour in a Doge’s Palace filled with lusciously indulgent robes, beautifully crafted in gilded and embossed silks and velvets.
The new designs include some magnificent coats gilded and embossed with Patricia and Charles’ unique designs, lined with soft silk giving them an extra luxurious feel.

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The Autumn Winter collection in Harrods is particularly stunning this season. Lustrous velvets in a glorious range of richly regal colours printed with our new black lacquer or gilded embossed printing.

New in the plus size collections are our gorgeous evening dresses.
The Josephine dress with its flattering empire line, hand beaded pleated top, and gilded embossed printed bias skirt, is an ideal outfit for the more elegant and glitzy evening event. Another style to look out for is the Mistress Iris Dress; bias cut with elegant V-neck with ‘open’ beading across from the shoulders down the sleeves giving a slim sexy line along the tops of the arms. A fantastic style especially for the more voluptuous figure as it hides tummies whilst curving gracefully in below the hips before flaring out to a bias skirt.

Many of the pieces in Harrods would make ideal Winter Wedding outfits. All are available by special order in the colour and prints of your choice. For more information you can either contact us directly orHarrods in the Plus Collections Department 0207 734 1234

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To complement the Plus Collections in Harrods, we are pleased to announce that we now have a collection of the smaller size garments available for a short while - until December 2007 -in Beauchamp Place again.

Many of you familiar with the area will know Eileen Coyne’s shop called ‘Also’ where she sells her own range of jewellery and as well as several collections from other designers. Described as ‘contemporary ethnic’ her style is as unique as the Lesters, and easily spotted around the globe by the many fans of her work.  Eileen has been in the business of designing and making jewellery for as long as we have been creating our textiles and garments. Like us she has sold to most of the top stores in the world at one time or another and like us has got involved in creating special pieces for the world of film the most notorious of which was the James Bond film “The World is Not Enough” (1999). Now these creations are only available in two places in the world, her shop and the ‘Rubin Museum of Tibetan Art’. Elieen also makes jewellery by special commission so this is an ideal way of getting the perfect accompaniment to your outfit.

Using a huge variety of precious and not so precious materials, including anything from plastic to emeralds, Eileen Coyne’s jewellery is perfect accompaniment to the richness of the Lester collections. “Also” has a small selection of our signature collection of hand pleated dresses, jackets, scarves and shawls along with a few velvet pieces.
If you would like to know more about “Also” please contact them on 0207 584 0231

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Feature Frock – Patchwork Skirts

These wonderful skirts are a fantastic addition to anyone’s wardrobe as they are such a flexible garment to have. They can be dressed up or down according to your occasion and better still are wonderfully comforting to wear curled up in front of a roaring log fire while you immerse yourself in a good book. Individually created – invariably by Patricia using her unique skills working with colour, every one is a work of art. Great for dinner parties and home entertaining, going to the theatre or the pub, they can be worn with a Lester top or a simple cashmere jumper.

They come in two basic designs – the slim or full bias cut. Both are equally versatile and both can be worn by most body shapes. The slim bias tends to look great on people whose thighs are slimmer than their hips whilst the drape of the full bias skirt is a great shape to disguise the larger thighs. The slim bias skirt is an incredibly slimming shape to wear making many girls look like they have lost a few pounds so unless people have a real anxiety about hiding their thighs – this is the shape to go for.

During the next few weeks (of November and early December) we will be photographing the ones that we have in stock and publishing them on the website. If you want to be kept informed about when we have done the pictures please let us know.

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New Gallery in San Francisco

A new and exciting project about to happen in this wonderful city – more news to be published soon.  Essentially the philosophy of the gallery is to offer the finest and rarest in jewellery, art, objets d'art and textiles in order to bring beauty to San Francisco. The store is across from the Moscone Center and behind the W Hotel and the Museum of Modern Art.

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Morris: A Life with Bells On

Morris has been a rare treat for us. More often than not we just get a phone call and our creations are released from our maternal clutches and sent out into the blue yonder without any knowledge of their future journey. Being involved with Morris has resulted in us spending quite a bit of time on set in Wiltshire getting a privileged view of how things work on set and behind the scenes. Getting to know the cast and crew was a real pleasure and being able to get engrossed in more than just a bit of costume design was a challenge to relish. The teamwork displayed was amazing – everyone seemed to absolutely love what they were doing – something that I think that will be evident in the end product.
Of course, being considered a part of this team, we were invited to a cast and crew film preview and despite not being the completely finished polished version, what we saw was brilliant and much more ‘finished’ than many other films that I have seen. We laughed a great deal and the story was charming. Sadly some of the scenes with our clothes ended up on the cutting room floor – typical in the world of film. However, despite that Hilary Wood is seen wearing a couple of really special outfits which do look great – well she liked them anyway!!
A quintessentially British story about the life of an avant-garde Morris dancer, it is set to be a classic comedy celebrating the more quirky traditions of our culture. No-one ever knows how successful any film is going to be and I feel that despite the small budget (miniscule compared to Hollywood standards), this film is set to become much bigger than it set out to be.  As soon as we know when it is due for release we will publish dates on the website.

Love and Virtue

Sadly no news yet about when filming is going to start but – some I have found some more information to whet your appetite
This is what is on www.imdb.com “A magical, haunting, epic adventure based on the captivating legends of "The Song of Roland" (La Chanson de Roland) and Orlando Innamorato. British actor Damian Lewis top lines as a knight in King Charlemagne's court who falls for Ledoyen's character. Malkovich and Madsen play barbarian marauders. Stephen Dillane (The Hours) plays Charlemagne, the first ruler of a united Western Europe since the fall of the Roman Empire.”
The costume designer – Ann Hollowood was responsible for our involvement with ‘The Ten Commandments’ in which Padma Lakshmi and Clare Bloom are to be seen wearing a variety of outfits. So we have high hopes for creative indulgence with this project. Ann is hoping that we will hear soon about when production is set to commence. We will let you know when we have some news.

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The response to our newsletters seems to get better each time we send something out. We were positively swamped with queries from people from all over the world. It has been such a joy communicating with so many enthusiastic and appreciative people. More and more are requesting to join our email newsletter list benefitting from the immediacy of internet communication. 

The Future of our Newsletters

We will be transferring most of our postal communication to email and as a result will only be sending out a printed newsletter once or twice a year – probably in March and September. If you really do not use email but would like to still be kept informed regularly then you need to get in touch with us and let us know.

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Website updates

You may or may not know that we like to do everything in house, including the web design. Everything in life is work in progress and there is always room for improvement. We are in the process of updating various pages – so if links don’t work or if you can’t click on the thumbnails to enlarge images, please bear with us – we are getting there.

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Are you buying from outside of the United Kingdom?

We have been selling to people from around the world for many years now - and as a result we now have an ever growing group of people who confidently buy from us directly via the internet, telephone or email. We are confident in being able to deliver items to virtually anywhere in the world. USA and Canada have the largest number of our customers and friends outside of the UK. If you have any questions that you would like answered before placing an order with us, please get in touch with us - we are more than happy to help.

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Online shop news

We have been so busy with doing special orders and getting stock to the various shops that we have not had enough time to configure the software for running the new online shop. So, for the moment you can continue going to the old shop and we will keep things flowing a bit more regularly so that you have something new to look at when you visit.

Email technical issues - are you still waiting for a reply from us?

We are generally pretty good at replying to our emails in that we like to respond within 24 hours (possibly a bit longer on the weekends) but there have been a few technical issues which have caused problems. Service providers that have been affected as far as we are aware include Onetel, Ukonline, BT, Yahoo, Orange and AOL. There are possibly others as well but these are the ones with which we have had direct firsthand experience. Similar symptoms of delayed message delivery (up to two weeks on numerous occasions) or worse still non-delivery of emails have repeatedly meant that we are not getting our emails when we should.

So …. if you have sent a message to us and not had a response this will be the reason why..

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Mel has had her baby

Congratulations to our beautiful model Mel (seen wearing maternity outfits in the summer) she has now had a gorgeous little girl who is very happy and healthy and an absolute joy.

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