Erica Weiner Getting Married
No surprise here: The jewelry designer’s Maine wedding was straight-up stunning.
Flower-girl dress—from the thirties!—waiting for action.
The biggest thing to go down in Erica Weiner’s life in 2011: She married her longtime BF Chris Anderson. And while the jewelry designer tried her damnedest to avoid falling down the wedding-blog rabbit hole—full of handmade napkin rings and souvenir menus—she did get a little swept away by the whole affair. But, as with everything she does, girlfriend owned it. —erica
“My dress was not antique—it was from Jenny Packham. I really didn’t think I would get a new dress, but I did!”
“The hair was awesome. I got the hairpiece from this incredible place in Chelsea called Illisa’s Vintage Lingerie. I met the owner because I was working on costumes for a tour of Cabaret years ago, and she is the local expert and collector of antique lingerie from that period. She also has trim and pins from that era—this is made of little crystals in silver wire.”
“I worried and worried over how we were going to schlep 60 chairs a quarter of a mile down to the lake, where we were going to have the ceremony. I had totally run over my budget at this point, and my mom suggested getting a few dozen bales of hay from our next-door-neighbor’s farm. He had his plow horses haul them over, and after the wedding we just distributed the hay as mulch on our own property.”
“The great thing about the bay leaves on the daisy chain, aside from them looking really pretty, is that I dried them and am probably going to have enough to cook with for the next few years!”
“Our friend’s perfectly named daughter Flora was our flower girl. On the spring day I asked her to do this important job, I took her on a date to Central Park, near where she lives. I asked her if she knew what a flower girl was, and she started jumping up and down. Then she went and made a fake bouquet out of some grass and flowers, and started solemnly practicing walking down an aisle. I was crying. Her dress came from Ritual Vintage on Broome Street. It was from the 1930s, made of delicate silk and lace, and I had to basically rebuild it, as the silk was kind of shredding. I busted out my sewing kit from my old costuming days and restored it to perfect condition.”
“My caterer decorated the food table with her own just-harvested vegetables, which she treated like flowers. She they used clear glass to show the decorative qualities of the kale’s roots, the cut-open yellow beets, and carrots. This was a stroke of genius, I think.”
“Maine in late summer, as you can imagine, is overflowing with spectacular edibles. All the food served at the wedding was grown locally by family farmers. We got a family friend, an oyster farmer, to set up a table and open them to order. Pemaquids, Damariscottas—these are some of the best oysters in the world, and they come from our county. The farmer showed up with his rubber boots still on—he had harvested the oysters that morning. I am pretty sure he was deeply stoned the whole time. A true Mainer.”
Photography by Katie Stoops.
comments, reblogs & likes
How Erica Weiner Found Rad Antique Furniture for Her Brooklyn Shop
A hoarding habit we’re more than okay with.
No offense to those peeps with top-notch shoe or stamp collections, but Erica Weiner has likely one-upped you with her stash of antique furniture. “When I see a great display case, I buy it, even if I don’t have anywhere to put it,” says the jewelry superstar. Luckily, her scores now have two homes: A sweet little spot on Elizabeth Street in Manhattan, and a killer new space at 360 Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn. See what she’s done with the second place (and pick up some sourcing tips along the way). —alisha prakash
“This big case is curved glass and zinc. It’s from the 1920s, and I got it from a picker in Philadelphia. The mirror above it came from Olde Good Things in Chelsea. The stand this case is on is from an antique store in Red Bank, New Jersey. It’s a wallpaper table—you collapse it, and it’s the exact width of a roll of wallpaper. The zinc-and-glass case just happened to be the exact same length! And the painter’s easel on the side was something I found on the street years ago.”
“These piano light lamps are from a store in Williamsburg called RePop. They’re supposed to sit on top of your piano to illuminate your sheet music.”
“My sister is a painter. This big white mirror is from her studio, which used to be a nunnery. They were getting rid of it. It was old, free, and weighs like 150 pounds.”
“The old Bakelite radio in the back was a gift from a friend who lives upstate. It didn’t work, so we pulled the back off and stuck a Bose in there for our music. The two jewelry cases match, but we didn’t get them from the same place. I found one at Arundel Antiques in Maine, and the second is from an antique picker I work with in Philadelphia called Three Potato Four. A few months before we got the space, Hurricane Sandy destroyed these beautiful wood and glass cases that were in my basement. They were like fish tanks, with living sea creatures in them. We had to dump out all the water and restore them.”
“I wanted to go for an arts-and-crafts, William Morris-type wallpaper look. While researching this, I accidentally found this large-scale, mural-style, seventies leaf-print wallpaper from a store called Second Hand Rose. I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I thought I would put it in my house—but then I realized this store could be anything I want it to be, so I bought it.”
“The typewriter is used to make signage for our jewelry. It’s from an Italian company called Olivetti. I wanted one that didn’t have any glitches that comes with a 100-year-old model, and I found out that Olivetti still makes new typewriters.”
“The door was one of the hardest things to find. We wanted a door that looked like an early-20th-century school door with half glass on top and solid wood on the bottom. This still has the original door hardware with an old skeleton key that works. I got the big case next to it from Olde Good Things. It had just been stripped—it was supposed to be dark wood. They hadn’t finished it, but that’s how I wanted it—it looks really raw.”
Photos courtesy of Michelle Smith McLaughlin.
GET READY for Erica’s edition tomorrow! It’s throwback and fresh, all at once.
comments, reblogs & likes
A Look at Erica Weiner’s Résumé
The jobs she held before she ran the show.
Between attending Vassar and starting her own jewelry business, Erica Weiner worked damn hard, doing the kind of jobs that required ingenuity—and a knack for dealing with children and very small celebrities. These are the gigs that eventually led her to her namesake line, which she launched from her kitchen table. —erica
Disillusioned camp counselor
“After September 11th—and a year in New York—I was like, ‘I’m going to be a camp counselor. I’m going to forget the dream—the Vassar dream—to be a famous artist or something and be a summer-camp counselor.’ I worked in the theatre department.”
Costume-creator and leotard-repairer for the stage
“At the end of camp, my friend said, ‘Someone just dropped out of the wardrobe spot on a national tour that leaves like tomorrow. Can you go?’ I kind of knew about dance costuming, and I made my own clothes. So I had a phone interview from the camp telephone in the mess hall—with all the kids. I totally lied my way through it. I got the job, and I did it for two years, for shows like Fosse. We went around on this tour bus—60 dancers, 10 crew members, and 4 semis. I got good at fixing things and jerry-rigging stuff. If we were in Reno or Nebraska and a pair of earrings broke, I’d have to figure out how to get the goddamn parts in one day.”
Erica in her New York studio with her dog Bunny.
Fashion workhorse
“I did a couple of years of unpaid fashion internships. I lived in my boyfriend’s apartment for free, and I was on food stamps for a year and a half—I was so poor. Eventually, I broke into the fashion world a little bit because I was good at getting things done without panicking. Somehow people heard that I could do stuff for fashion shows at the very last minute, so I got calls where people would say, ‘We need a whole dress by tomorrow’ or, ‘We need all of these dresses to go from cocktail-length to tea-length.’ I’d somehow do it, and I’d make what felt like a lot of money. It wasn’t very good for me, and I didn’t sleep a lot.”
Do-everything girl for a buzzy fashion line
“At Imitation of Christ, I did the line sheets, communicated with the buyers, made dresses, cast models, designed shoes, talked to factories, sketched, visited the factories in Midtown—a lot of work. I had some glamorous moments there, though. Mary-Kate Olsen was around a lot. I would do fittings and have to tailor dresses to her tiny, tiny body. It’d be her and me in a bathroom—her completely naked, me with a bunch of safety pins. I would think, ‘I’ve got to text my friends because this situation is so funny.’”
comments, reblogs & likes
Erica Weiner’s Little Pieces of History
She doesn’t create everything from scratch. And that’s a good thing.
Some of the jewelry that fills the cases at Erica Weiner’s Nolita store comes with baggage: The resourceful designer mixes vintage trinkets she digs up at flea markets, antique fairs, and, duh, eBay into many of her creations. And through her years of hunting, Erica has gotten a lot more adept at uncovering the stories behind her ripe-for-revival finds. These are some of the most compelling discoveries in the mix right now.
“This is a decoder pin for kids that you could send away for. It says “ROA,” which stands for Radio Orphan Annie. You’d listen to the show, and they’d say, “Hey, kids, get out your decoder pin because there’s a new message.” It’s from 1937, and every year there was a different, amazing Art Deco design.”
“This is a class ring from 1902—like a high school ring. I am not good enough at dating antiques to just look at something and always know exactly when it’s from, but this one’s easy to pin down. It’s printed on the piece.”
“A lot of the things I find have to do with advertising. I guess the Heinz company gave these away at World’s Fairs. People were into giving stuff away, but this was a really creative form. I think they distributed five million of those—that’s a huge amount of crap to give away.”
“If you look into this, you can see a naked lady. Some of these pieces are really racy. I don’t know their origin exactly, but they’re older than they look—from the 1870s, maybe.”
“The black part of this ring is elephant hair—from the tail of an elephant. People would travel to British Colonial India, go on these safaris, and send back jewelry for their wives. Since elephants have long memories, it’s supposed to be a forget-me-not.”
Get a load of Erica Weiner’s latest edition! This (leopard!) lariat necklace is major.
comments, reblogs & likes
A Look at Erica Weiner’s Résumé
The jobs she held before she ran the show.
Between attending Vassar and starting her own jewelry business, Erica Weiner worked damn hard, doing the kind of jobs that required ingenuity—and a knack for dealing with children and very small celebrities. These are the gigs that eventually led her to her namesake line, which she launched from her kitchen table.
Disillusioned camp counselor
“After September 11th—and a year in New York—I was like, ‘I’m going to be a camp counselor. I’m going to forget the dream—the Vassar dream—to be a famous artist or something and be a summer-camp counselor.’ I worked in the theatre department.”
Costume-creator and leotard-repairer for the stage
“At the end of camp, my friend said, ‘Someone just dropped out of the wardrobe spot on a national tour that leaves like tomorrow. Can you go?’ I kind of knew about dance costuming, and I made my own clothes. So I had a phone interview from the camp telephone in the mess hall—with all the kids. I totally lied my way through it. I got the job, and I did it for two years, for shows like Fosse. We went around on this tour bus—60 dancers, 10 crew members, and 4 semis. I got good at fixing things and jerry-rigging stuff. If we were in Reno or Nebraska and a pair of earrings broke, I’d have to figure out how to get the goddamn parts in one day.”
Erica in her New York studio with her dog Bunny.
Fashion workhorse
“I did a couple of years of unpaid fashion internships. I lived in my boyfriend’s apartment for free, and I was on food stamps for a year and a half—I was so poor. Eventually, I broke into the fashion world a little bit because I was good at getting things done without panicking. Somehow people heard that I could do stuff for fashion shows at the very last minute, so I got calls where people would say, ‘We need a whole dress by tomorrow’ or, ‘We need all of these dresses to go from cocktail-length to tea-length.’ I’d somehow do it, and I’d make what felt like a lot of money. It wasn’t very good for me, and I didn’t sleep a lot.”
Do-everything girl for a buzzy fashion line
“At Imitation of Christ, I did the line sheets, communicated with the buyers, made dresses, cast models, designed shoes, talked to factories, sketched, visited the factories in Midtown—a lot of work. I had some glamorous moments there, though. Mary-Kate Olsen was around a lot. I would do fittings and have to tailor dresses to her tiny, tiny body. It’d be her and me in a bathroom—her completely naked, me with a bunch of safety pins. I would think, ‘I’ve got to text my friends because this situation is so funny.’”
comments, reblogs & likes
Erica Weiner’s Maine Favorites
The Victorian finds are as impressive as the lobsters.
Though Erica Weiner’s a New Yorker through and through, she has a soft spot for Maine, where her parents now live and where she does a lot of sourcing for her jewelry line, which is full of antique trinkets (that she somehow makes very cool). “Growing up, I spent every summer going to camp there, like a good Jewish kid,” Erica explains. These are the places that fit her food- and accessory-consumption needs.
Orphan Annie’s
“It’s mostly Victorian stuff—mostly jewelry. But the owner is, I think, the only gay guy for miles around, so he has things like beefcake postcards, too. It’s really weird.”
(96 Court St., Auburn, 207-782-0638)
Erica outside of Elmer’s Barn in 2007. “That place is insane—but a goldmine.”
Elmer’s Barn
“It’s like a mile from where my parents live. It has cachet now—I think Martha Stewart discovered him, and he was told by his daughter or something that he needed to raise his prices. So now his upstairs is exorbitantly expensive, but the basement is still cheap. He also has a giant, pot-bellied stove in the middle of the barn, and in the winter he just sits there and heaves logs into it. So it’s really warm and cozy.”
(Route 17, Coopers Mills, 207-549-7671)
A1 Diner
“The owners are Brooklyn people who moved up there like five years ago and bought this old dining car of a train. It’s Park Sloped out—in the middle of, really, nowhere—and it’s always full. They do an amazing chicken marsala from the Moosewood Restaurant cookbook, and they have fantastic desserts—delicious gingerbread, lots of pies.”
(3 Bridge St., Gardiner, 207-582-4804; a1diner.com)
Liberty Tool Company
“It’s a rural tool-and-parts barn, and it’s incredible. Also, it’s like a three-story firetrap.”
(57 Main St., Liberty, 207-589-4771)
Erica eating oysters at Red’s Eats.
Red’s Eats
“It’s a shack at the side of the road—with two-hour waits. They serve lobster rolls, steamed lobsters, fried clams, fried shrimp—simple stuff like that.”
(Main St. & Water St., Wiscasset, 207-882-6128)
Morse’s Sauerkraut
“A lot of German people moved to Maine in the 1910s and 1920s. Someone opened this place called Morse’s, with sauerkraut, pickles, and German meats. It’s a roadhouse kind of space that’s half beer hall, half deli/grocery. They serve completely amazing food—some of the best German food I’ve ever had.”
(3856 Washington Rd., Waldoboro, 207-832-5569; morsessauerkraut.com)
Nobleboro Antique Exchange
“I just bought a whole lot of stuff there. There’s this lady, Miss Helen, who I didn’t meet this time but whom I have an appointment with. She’s 90 years old and a collector of Victorian antiques—I bought a lot of stuff from her booth. You tell her what you want—say, you’re looking for Civil War-era diamond solitaires—and she’ll make you a little package of what she finds and mail it to you. You keep what you like and send the rest back with a check written for what you kept.”
(104 U.S. 1, Nobleboro, 207-563-6800; nobleboroantiqueexchange.com)
Some of the specialties at Hussey’s General Store.
Hussey’s General Store
“I think it’s mostly for Mennonites, but they have everything: chain, hardware, snacks, animal feed, and, yes, wedding dresses.”
(510 Ridge Rd., Whitefield, 207-445-2511; husseysgeneralstore.com)
Check out Erica’s latest edition! We have a feeling it’s going to go very fast…
comments, reblogs & likes
Erica Weiner’s (Three-Story!) House
That’s the beauty of moving to Red Hook.
For reals: There’s a piano.
When Erica Weiner moved from downtown Manhattan to Red Hook along the Brooklyn waterfront in 2009, she traded a tiny studio for the sort of turn-of-the-century place that can hold a piano. “I found it through Craigslist,” says the jewelry designer with a rabid fanbase. “In Red Hook, you can still get a great place without a broker. The owner is Italian, and he grew up in the neighborhood.” Here’s how she and her new husband made the spot their own.
“The previous tenants had painted the walls fluorescent colors. Most of it was ugly, but we kind of liked the green in this room. We made it even more fluorescent. My sister did that painting in high school. Now she has her masters in painting and is teaching art history at SVA.”
“Chris—my husband—was in the band They Might Be Giants, singing back-up for their albums and playing bass. The wife of one of the band members actually married us. Hanging up there at the top of the stairs is a Victorian morning coat. I got it at a costume house in Scotland—it’s fading in the sun.”
“This cabinet is something they sold to make women’s lives easier in the early 1900s. It has all of these gadgets—high-tech at the time—like a flour-sifter bin: You put your bowl under it, and it sifts flour into it from the bin above. It’s storage and sifting—all my problems are solved! I found an ad in a Ladies’ Home Journal from 1912 for the exact cabinet that I have.”
“This is a chair I found. It’s the skeleton from an old stuffed armchair—it was on the bottom floor of my Chrystie Street studio. I brought it home and made seating and a back for it.”
“That’s my picture wall. I’ve been reading too much Design*Sponge—that’s pretty much required in a house according to that blog. And the padded couch is seating at the dining-room table.”
comments, reblogs & likes
Erica Weiner’s Little Pieces of History
She doesn’t create everything from scratch. And that’s a good thing.
Some of the jewelry that fills the cases at Erica Weiner’s Nolita store comes with baggage: The resourceful designer mixes vintage trinkets she digs up at flea markets, antique fairs, and, duh, eBay into many of her creations. And through her years of hunting, Erica has gotten a lot more adept at uncovering the stories behind her ripe-for-revival finds. These are some of the most compelling discoveries in the mix right now.
“This is a decoder pin for kids that you could send away for. It says “ROA,” which stands for Radio Orphan Annie. You’d listen to the show, and they’d say, “Hey, kids, get out your decoder pin because there’s a new message.” It’s from 1937, and every year there was a different, amazing Art Deco design.”
“This is a class ring from 1902—like a high school ring. I am not good enough at dating antiques to just look at something and always know exactly when it’s from, but this one’s easy to pin down. It’s printed on the piece.”
“A lot of the things I find have to do with advertising. I guess the Heinz company gave these away at World’s Fairs. People were into giving stuff away, but this was a really creative form. I think they distributed five million of those—that’s a huge amount of crap to give away.”
“If you look into this, you can see a naked lady. Some of these pieces are really racy. I don’t know their origin exactly, but they’re older than they look—from the 1870s, maybe.”
“The black part of this ring is elephant hair—from the tail of an elephant. People would travel to British Colonial India, go on these safaris, and send back jewelry for their wives. Since elephants have long memories, it’s supposed to be a forget-me-not.”
Just wait til you see the edition Erica made for us. Get on our email list for the first look.
comments, reblogs & likes
Erica Weiner’s (Three-Story!) House
That’s the beauty of moving to Red Hook.
For reals: There’s a piano.
When Erica Weiner moved from downtown Manhattan to Red Hook along the Brooklyn waterfront in 2009, she traded a tiny studio for the sort of turn-of-the-century place that can hold a piano. “I found it through Craigslist,” says the jewelry designer with a rabid fanbase. “In Red Hook, you can still get a great place without a broker. The owner is Italian, and he grew up in the neighborhood.” Here’s how she and her new husband made the spot their own.
“The previous tenants had painted the walls fluorescent colors. Most of it was ugly, but we kind of liked the green in this room. We made it even more fluorescent. My sister did that painting in high school. Now she has her masters in painting and is teaching art history at SVA.”
“Chris—my husband—was in the band They Might Be Giants, singing back-up for their albums and playing bass. The wife of one of the band members actually married us. Hanging up there at the top of the stairs is a Victorian morning coat. I got it at a costume house in Scotland—it’s fading in the sun.”
“This cabinet is something they sold to make women’s lives easier in the early 1900s. It has all of these gadgets—high-tech at the time—like a flour-sifter bin: You put your bowl under it, and it sifts flour into it from the bin above. It’s storage and sifting—all my problems are solved! I found an ad in a Ladies’ Home Journal from 1912 for the exact cabinet that I have.”
“This is a chair I found. It’s the skeleton from an old stuffed armchair—it was on the bottom floor of my Chrystie Street studio. I brought it home and made seating and a back for it.”
“That’s my picture wall. I’ve been reading too much Design*Sponge—that’s pretty much required in a house according to that blog. And the padded couch is seating at the dining-room table.”
comments, reblogs & likes
A Look at Erica Weiner’s Résumé
The jobs she held before she ran the show.
Between attending Vassar and starting her own jewelry business, Erica Weiner worked damn hard, doing the kind of jobs that required ingenuity—and a knack for dealing with children and very small celebrities. These are the gigs that eventually led her to her namesake line, which she launched from her kitchen table.
Check out the necklace that the very clever designer made just for Of a Kind here!
Disillusioned camp counselor
“After September 11th—and a year in New York—I was like, ‘I’m going to be a camp counselor. I’m going to forget the dream—the Vassar dream—to be a famous artist or something and be a summer-camp counselor.’ I worked in the theatre department.”
Costume-creator and leotard-repairer for the stage
“At the end of camp, my friend said, ‘Someone just dropped out of the wardrobe spot on a national tour that leaves like tomorrow. Can you go?’ I kind of knew about dance costuming, and I made my own clothes. So I had a phone interview from the camp telephone in the mess hall—with all the kids. I totally lied my way through it. I got the job, and I did it for two years, for shows like Fosse. We went around on this tour bus—60 dancers, 10 crew members, and 4 semis. I got good at fixing things and jerry-rigging stuff. If we were in Reno or Nebraska and a pair of earrings broke, I’d have to figure out how to get the goddamn parts in one day.”
Erica in her New York studio with her dog Bunny.
Fashion workhorse
“I did a couple of years of unpaid fashion internships. I lived in my boyfriend’s apartment for free, and I was on food stamps for a year and a half—I was so poor. Eventually, I broke into the fashion world a little bit because I was good at getting things done without panicking. Somehow people heard that I could do stuff for fashion shows at the very last minute, so I got calls where people would say, ‘We need a whole dress by tomorrow’ or, ‘We need all of these dresses to go from cocktail-length to tea-length.’ I’d somehow do it, and I’d make what felt like a lot of money. It wasn’t very good for me, and I didn’t sleep a lot.”
Do-everything girl for a buzzy fashion line
“At Imitation of Christ, I did the line sheets, communicated with the buyers, made dresses, cast models, designed shoes, talked to factories, sketched, visited the factories in Midtown—a lot of work. I had some glamorous moments there, though. Mary-Kate Olsen was around a lot. I would do fittings and have to tailor dresses to her tiny, tiny body. It’d be her and me in a bathroom—her completely naked, me with a bunch of safety pins. I would think, ‘I’ve got to text my friends because this situation is so funny.’”
