Doggie style
Fashion folk are showing their puppy love with $500 designer sweaters
BRITTAIN Sullivan isn’t the type of person to decorate her home with puppy portraits or create an Instagram account for her dog. Yet, a few months ago, the 34-year-old Chinatown resident strolled into the hip Soho boutique Opening Ceremony. Soon, she was shelling out close to $500 to have someone embroider an image of her husband’s cheeky papillon, Gidget, onto a sweater.
“When I heard the price I was like, ‘I think I have to lie down,’ ” Sullivan, who works in the fashion industry, tells The Post. “But it was worth every penny.”
Her husband, Matt Finkle, agrees. “When I turned the sweater around and saw Gidget in the back I definitely started crying,” says the 38-year-old hospitality manager. “I wear it once a week. My co-workers call it my lucky sweater.”
Wearing your pet’s likeness on a T-shirt or hoodie used to be for crazy cat ladies and eccentric animal lovers. No longer. With Opening Ceremony offering customized wearable pet portraits through its Get Personal program, stylish 20- and 30-somethings are getting their furry friends stitched onto merch — and paying a lot of dough for it.
The animal embroideries, done by designers Alisha Trimble and Whitney Washington, start at $500 and can cost upward of $1,000, depending on the size and extra embellishments. (The work can only be done on a garment newly purchased at Opening Ceremony.) Get Personal also offers simpler designs, like monograms, for $45, but the dog portraits officially launched in March.
“It seemed obvious we needed to offer custom pet portraits,” Trimble tells The Post. “Plus, it’s the Year of the Dog [in the Chinese zodiac] . . . so it just seemed perfect.”
Customers first choose a clothing item from the store — hoodies and sweatshirts are the most popular, though Trimble has done custom embroideries on organza dresses, too. The client then sends in several photos of their pup.
“We create a mood board and ask a lot of questions to get the essence of their dog,” says Trimble. “We want to capture what’s special about their pet.”
The artists render an illustration on a computer, using embroidery software to select thread colors and stitches to create a pattern that looks like the pet, but is also stylized. The whole process takes one to two weeks.
At the end, the shopper not only gets their garment, but a sample embroidery they can hang in their home. Duplicates of the portrait can be embroidered onto additional items purchased from the shop for $150 each.
Customers say it’s worth the money. “My dog is like my little baby,” says Jeni Takekawa, a 30-yearold product manager who ordered a sweatshirt embroidered with her short-haired Brussels Griffon, Darth Yoda McGriddle, during her last visit to New York. “It was crazy: They brought her to life on a little crewneck,” says the Beaverton, Oregon, resident. “I cried when I got it.”