The Willow Glen Resident

Photograph by Skye Dunlap

Big Time: "We're hoping for a big order from a department store," says Leona Guidance, who runs DeCre fashion design company with her husband, Robert.

WG designing woman crosses her fingers for that big break

Founders of DeCre already see soap-opera stars wearing their creations

By Cecily Barnes

From the outside, the home where 27-year-old Leona Guidance lives with her husband and mother-in-law looks like any other Willow Glen residence. But parked inside the garage of this Briarwood Drive home is not a leaky car but a burgeoning fashion-design company called DeCre--standing for the Latin words meaning to create, to think and to believe.

Eventually, Guidance and husband Robert, 28, say, they want to pump up their wholesale company to a multimillion-dollar operation, running retail shops throughout the nation. It's a big dream, but one the young couple is aggressively working toward.

"I want DeCre to be a known and highly respected label. When you open up Vogue every month, I want our ad to be there," Guidance says dreamily. "That's my goal--to be a respected label that everyone's heard of, like Guess."

For now, Guidance sketches designs on notepad paper and sews each dress by hand with her personal Viking Husqvarna sewing machine. She creates a new line each season, and crosses her fingers that the orders will come in.

Unable to afford the approximately $30,000 one-time cost for an advertisement in Vogue, Guidance relies on the exposure her dresses get through her representative in New York, and from the few boutiques which have found her designs marketable.

"We're hoping for a big order from a department store; that would be a big break," Guidance says.

Leona Guidance was born and raised in Soldotna, Alaska, an 3,907-person town with hardly anything beyond grocery stores and gas stations. Her mother was a seamstress who made clothes for the family and the rest of the community.

Together, Guidance and her mother thumbed through fashion magazines, dreaming about having those clothes. Then Leona's mother would sew duplicates. When Guidance was about 11 years old, the family moved to Bakersfield.

Meanwhile, in Willow Glen, Robert Guidance lived with his family on Briarwood Drive, attending Willow Glen High School. The two teens met their junior year of high school at the California State Summer School for the Arts, a program for artistically talented young people. Through a fluke, they both ended up at Parsons School of Design in Los Angeles, where they began dating.

Although Leona sketches the designs and puts her name in the label, Robert consults on the sketches and sews a stitch every time Leona does. Robert's mother allows them to use her garage for their business and her house for their home--rent-free.

Guidance started DeCre on a whim two years ago after quitting her design job at Bebe in San Francisco. Sick of working to actualize somebody else's dream, she decided to pursue her own company.

"I quit on a Friday and sat around on Saturday and Sunday and said, 'Oh my God, what am I going to do now?' " Guidance says. "And then on Monday, I went down to City Hall and registered with the name DeCre."

After taking the plunge, Guidance went to work frantically sketching, designing and sewing until she transported her dresses to a trade show, where boutique owners shop for new products.

"We sold four dresses and after sending them out, they were all returned," Guidance laughs. "The first season was pretty much a failure."

But after the next line things began looking up. Representatives from Jennifer Croll, a woman's boutique in Los Gatos and San Francisco, took a liking to DeCre and bought a few dresses. Since they've sold successfully, Croll has continued to buy.

A fashion representative spotted a DeCre dress at Jennifer Croll in San Francisco and contacted Guidance to see if she'd be interested in being displayed in his New York showroom. Of course, she accepted. Today, nearly 15 boutiques throughout the nation carry DeCre, and the television soap opera General Hospital has also bought some of the clothing for its cast.

"It's really hard, but we're surviving," Guidance says with a smile.

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