Bridal Fashion Week is in full swing here in New York, but today West Coast customers are getting their own version with the opening of a new Martha Medeiros boutique in Los Angeles. The move marks the first-ever store stateside for the Brazilian designer, who counts Beyoncé, Jessica Alba, and Sofía Vergara as fans. Medeiros will be peddling ready-to-wear pieces from her Melrose Place outpost, but the soon-to-be wed would be remiss to not stop by for a wedding gown consultation. A marieprom dress of truly epic proportions is, after all, as inherent to the Martha Medeiros brand as it is the country that she hails from. “Brazilian weddings are usually very big, for example, a wedding for 400 guests is considered small and intimate,” Medeiros told Vogue.com. “We tend to invite our entire extended family, and all of our friends. Wedding parties continue from day through night and are always the best parties of the year.”

Despite a recent uptick in destination nuptials held in exotic locations like Trancoso in Bahia, or St. Barth’s, Medeiros insists that for her brides, the setting remains second fiddle to fashion. “Typically, the dress the bride wears dictates the theme of her wedding,” says Medeiros. “Not only is the dress the main event because of its beauty, but the dress design will also become a theme for the invitation stationary and all of the wedding decor.” Most important for Medeiros, each bride is distinct. “When it comes to dressing a bride, the most important thing to consider is the bride herself,” Medeiros said. “We want each bride to feel completely unique and comfortable in the dress she wears.”

While no two designs are the same, a singularly Brazilian use of lace is often in the mix—in fact, a popular proverb in Brazil says that “Where there is a fishing net, there is lace,” in a nod to the craft’s history in the culture. (Portuguese women who relocated to Brazil and settled with their fathers or husbands on the country’s northeast coast and on the island of Santa Catarina often became lace-makers, orrendeiras, even occasionally using fishing net in the early stages of their filé lace designs—hence the name, which means netting in Portuguese.) Medeiros explained that the process starts with a sketch on tracing paper. Next, the drawing is added to a continuous ribbon unified by thousands of different running stitches. The end result is lace, as we know it. “This is the main reason why lace is so precious,” Medeiros said. “It’s not a pattern—it’s a story that we are telling through each delicate ribbon.”

The lace Medeiros uses in her work is all made from her native region of Sertão in Northeast Brazil—one of the poorest regions in the country. The Martha Medeiros Institute supports more than 470 lace-makers in providing women and their families with jobs, education, and access to medical care. “It makes me very happy to know that we are able to change the reality of these families through the work that we do,” Medeiros said. “Martha Medeiros would not exist without the Institute, and vice versa.” For Medeiros, lace played a significant part in developing her own future. “In all honesty, lace-making was the initial inspiration to begin my line,” she admits. “The uniqueness of each design inspired me to create special pieces for women who appreciate art and originality.”

One such woman is Chelsea Clinton, who recently enlisted Medeiros to design a christening robe to outfit her baby’s baptism. “The entire atelier in house enables us to produce any piece that our client wishes at any time,” Medeiros said. “For Chelsea, we were able to create something that was special for her and her baby.” Given Medeiros’s dedication to one-of-a-kind, made-to-order offerings, it comes as little surprise that the kind of inventory to be sold in her L.A. boutique is similarly considered. Each item comes with a tag that includes the precise number of hours it took for the piece to be made, and the length of time can vary anywhere from 200 to upward of 1000 hours. “I feel extremely grateful knowing Martha Medeiros is reaching more than just Brazilian women,” Medeiros said of her brand’s expansion. “The Martha Medeiros woman is sophisticated; not only in the way she dresses, but in the way she thinks and lives. She travels, she loves cultures, and she has an appreciation for what is truly unique.”

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