Today we’d like to introduce you to Lindsay Ulness.
Hi Lindsay, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstories.
I was one of the lucky kiddos who always knew what I wanted to do when I grew up – or just had naivety around the pitfalls of pursuing a passion! Either way, since early elementary school I KNEW I wanted to make dresses. However I was dreaming up red carpet gowns, bridal had NEVER crossed my mind.
I always enjoyed drawing and was filling pages with sketches of clothing at a young age. My 5th-grade teacher integrated sewing into our classroom and I was ENAMORED. I asked for a sewing machine for my 11th birthday and we were in business folks! I never took proper lessons (I’m a Taurus so naturally stubborn) but was determined to teach myself. I made lots of pretty weird things if I’m being honest and was brave enough to wear some of them to school. My dream was to go to New York and study at the fashion institute – when college prep came around my parents gave a pretty big “heck no” to moving to NYC at age 17. I was accepted to UW Madison which has a really amazing apparel and textile design program. (Loved it and highly recommend) They just happened to have the option to complete your final year at FIT and I was New York bound after all baby!
I’ve always been drawn to things of the past. As a teenager, I spent a lot of my free time wandering thrift stores and antique malls. I would find unique fabrics or old floral sheets to make clothing out of. Well, this didn’t change in NYC. We would take our weekly trips to Mood Fabrics and I would ceaselessly end up at the Chelsea Garage flea market Sunday mornings.
I found this beautiful vintage lace that I thought would make one heckuva dress for part of my senior collection. And it did. It turned out so dang lovely in fact that I had it photographed for my portfolio. A few weeks after graduating, I got a call from one of the attorneys at the Model Agency I used who said she’d seen the photos and had been trying to track me down. She was getting married and wanted me to make a dress for her and all of her bridesmaids!
WEDDINGS?! You are calling this a wedding dress?! It initially was a gut punch and I felt kinda insulted that my work was seen as bridal. Big. Puffy. Sequins. That’s what you imagine when you think to wed. Not a category I put myself in. But that wasn’t what this was… I made something I loved and someone was asking to PAY ME for more. Well, that kinda sounds like my dream doesn’t it?
It was at this moment that everything changed and a new perspective was born. If I could design one-of-a-kind dresses in my aesthetic and make a living (I say this lightly) off of it in the wedding industry, then by all means let’s do that! It was all a hapccient (a happy accident), and I’m so dang grateful for that woman. She seriously changed the trajectory of my life.
I came back to the midwest for a beat, which I thought was going to be temporary, and ended up having breakfast with Sarah. She was also in the midst of a transition and coincidentally also in the wedding industry as a photographer. I think by the end of breakfast we had decided that we were starting a business together, though we had absolutely no idea how or where or what exactly that would look like and lineage transpired!
Sometimes you just need to start before you’re ready and figure things out as you go…
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Ya know, Covid really threw a wrench into things didn’t it? It completely disrupted the way we did business. Man-o-man did something completely unexpected and beautiful transpires.
During the lockdown, bridal showrooms obviously closed and weddings were on pause. Not super great for business to say the least. As it turns out, some folks still wanted to get hitched and were open to pivoting – the micro wedding and elopement trend went into full force. Nature was the available venue and brides were using it as their backdrop. National parks, backyards, backcountry. Somehow these brides found us.
Because lineage is made to order, we use vintage lace, and have a generally sustainable platform – we luckily didn’t have any clogs in production. We had been wanting to work direct-to-customer for a while but just didn’t know how to facilitate it. With folks becoming SO comfortable with remote communication as a new way of life, we began working with brides all over the country. We embraced the challenge of taking design calls over zoom and instructing brides on taking their own measurements – if anything it helped me gain confidence in my craft. Through this, we discovered how effortless our pieces are for adventure elopements.
Packable | Hike-able | Comfortable. We’ve rolled a setup into a backpack ourselves and hiked a mountain to test it, and we have a roster of adventure brides to verify! The elopement trend that spun out of covid really brought this to life for us and we’re loving it. We continue to work with brides remotely all over the country and even pop up out west every once in a while to take appointments and drop pieces off in person!
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
We have developed our own little niche space in the bridal dress industry and it has been SO dang special to watch it evolve. We create custom bridal separates – one-of-a-kind tops and bodysuits made from vintage lace and paired with our collection of silk skirts. I consider myself an artist and the tops and bodysuits are truly my art I’m designing around the female form. The custom aspect is really cool but what fills our cup is the experience. Working directly with our brides rather than working through a showroom gives us the opportunity to develop pretty dope relationships! It’s a really special process that adds to your bridal journey.
Our goal for bridal separates is to wear them again (we’re having fun with a #LINYAGEINTHEWILD campaign of gals wearing pieces in life doing realistic/not realistic things. It’s a vibe). Wear your bodysuit for a boudoir shoot, change into a second skirt or wide-leg trousers for the reception, and pair it with jeans for your anniversary, an event, or just everyday life! Needless to say, we don’t care how you wear your lineage, just wear it more than once.
Who else deserves credit for your story?
Oooof. Going into business with one of your best friends. The thing that everyone tells you NOT to do… well we did it, folks. And let me tell ya, it’s friggin’ beautiful! Sarah and I met in the 5th grade so we’ve known each other for longer than we haven’t. Linyage wouldn’t have started without her. Sarah is… well, Sarah is a lot of things and if I made a list of hobbies, jobs, and talents, it would be 10 pages long because she’s one of those gals that has lived a lot of lives. To refine some key hats she wears for Linyage – photographer, graphic designer, event coordinator, and marketing. And she really likes people. Like a lot. She is the biggest hype girl and the fact that we bring separate skills to the table is one of the things that make it work because we stay in our own lanes.
Not to say that having a friend as a business partner doesn’t come with challenges – COMMUNICATION is key and we have made this a priority. There’s inevitably overlap between work and life, our lives are so integrated, how could it not? “Life” things play so much into productivity – emotions, health, grief, and family. We started a ritual to meet every Sunday for coffee and it has been a game changer to the way we operate. We start the meeting with life updates – kids (her), dogs (her), dating (me) – and then go over the needle movers for the week and divide and conquer meeting each other where we’re at. We’re also obviously texting all day long, it’s a miracle we still like each other so much!
It has been a really special thing to build lineage together (not to mention a second business – Velvet Raptor). We acknowledge almost every day how dang blessed we are to be entwined in each other’s lives in this way and the flexibility it creates for us. Running your own small business is a lot of work, a lot of hours clocked, and a lot of instability. But we lean on each other and started to make a point to celebrate small wins and find joy every day!
Contact Info:
- Website: linyage.com
- Instagram: @_linyage_
- Facebook: linyage
Image Credits
SMMG Photography, Fur And Lace Photography, Amanda Leise Photo, and Opal & Ox
