October 12, 2017

Meet Jurate Luckaite of Violeta Lucce in West Palm Beach

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jurate Luckaite.

So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
Everything began with a hand painted handbag, silk scarf and a pair of hand painted boots graciously given to me as a birthday gift from my sister Violeta. From that moment on, the rest became a history and Violeta Lucce was born.

Being a fashion stylist and a designer, I decided to combine my and my sister’s talents (she is a European Master on silk and an incredibly talented artist) together and create something extraordinary that never existed before. My idea was to add a new dimension in fashion and revolutionize fashion industry by fusing fine art and high-end fashion together.

Our incredible journey started in Hawaii where inspirations came from beautiful elements of nature, from depths of the ocean, from beauty of the blooming tropical trees. We were surrounded by most incredible energy so we started transferring it on silk. It was energy that we were painting on silk shawls, swimming suite cover-ups and dresses. Our vision was to inspire and encourage women of all ages to embrace their own beauty through hand painted luxurious silk couture and we created our first line with vivid colors, flowing styles and sophisticated details that embody female empowerment. Each silk piece became alive when the brush stroked the surface and the finished results captured the true essence of beauty and femininity.

Our idea was to transform any woman into a fine art masterpiece shifting her spirit into true magnificence.

The design philosophy of Violeta Lucce was to create wearable “art couture” where silk designs can be worn as dresses, skirts, wraps, tops or accessorized. Each piece can be custom made for elegant women who understand fine art across the globe and who are looking for something truly extraordinary…

Something that has a meaning and a soul…

Something that is not mass produced but rather created from our hearts…

Something that takes days, weeks even months to create…

Something that needs the most pure intention to seek beauty through nature and through woman’s eyes and transfer it on a live medium – silk where no mistakes can be made…

It takes two of us – artist and the designer to create a unique masterpiece. Starting with simple hand painted silk shawls, then luxurious resort wear pieces, later on, hand bags, shoes, boots, dresses, and finally diving into a collection of hand painted wedding gowns, we created a new dimension in fashion for those who are tired of cookie cutter dresses and the same designs that everybody wears with no soul and meaning. Our luxurious art couture masterpieces are signed by the artist and custom created to each woman’s personality. Her body type, her silhouette and her style.

With each new piece we are celebrating the woman through the uniqueness and grace of original artwork draped over her body, transforming her into a fine art masterpiece while truly creating “A Feast for your Eyes and Inspiration for your Soul.”

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Even though we have evolved so much over time from simple shawls to sophisticated dresses, to extraordinary wedding gowns our journey has been really challenging. From trying to get exposure and building our brand while hiring many business advisors, strategists, marketing specialists, lawyers who make sure you spend the most money you possibly can on their services, to dumping money into so many worthless fashion shows, exhibitions, events, photo shoots, meeting wrong people who want to take advantage of new talent, to listening to too many opinions of what we should be doing to be successful. All of this made us learn a lot of valuable lessons that only we know the direction and others just have opinions. Now we are very selective of which shows and events we participate at, who are the models for our unique art couture, who is the audience that comes to our events, who gets to be on our team and what collections get created.

We truly believe that any company that has a unique and out of the box product, incurs a lot of struggles. Our biggest struggles were financial because every event, every fashion show, every runway required a lot of money. Branding, exposure, PR requires ridiculous amounts of money.

Another big challenge was that people have never seen this before, so it took time to educate our audience. Most of them thought that our collections were printed until they saw the 3D silk paint popping out and felt the texture and then they were just amazed of how even it’s possible.

Sometimes it’s really challenging to be a visionary because most people only know what they have seen. I remember going to a wedding salon in Miami Design District to show our wedding gowns to the owner. The art Director went crazy over them, he was so excited to see something so fresh and new and the owner replied “but nobody ever asked me for a hand painted wedding gown, you don’t have a big brand yet, come back when you do.”

Our niche is relatively small, because we create one of a kind pieces and we do not mass produce. Since each piece is hand painted and custom created for each woman individually, our prices are relatively high and many times people cannot put this together, because we are not a big brand. Those who understand and appreciate it, become our clients for life and are really happy to wear a piece of fine art that is created to fit their personality.

Please tell us about Violeta Lucce.
We do not have our collections in any stores. When we create new collections, we do fashion shows and events and showcase our masterpieces on live models. If there are several people interested in one specific piece, we start a bidding process where the highest bidder gets it, just like the masterpieces are being sold in the auctions.

We not only have wearable art collections but we also create custom paintings for specific interiors. Once again, our paintings have soul, so they breath and they are energy. We look at the interiors, we feel the energy, we meet the owner of the place and we create accordingly a painting that will be a perfect fit. Everything has to be in sync and in alignment to allow the energy flow freely.

Our biggest pride comes when our customers tell us that they feel amazing wearing our pieces and they turn heads and get compliments everywhere they go.

Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
My favorite memory from my childhood was I went on a trip from Lithuania to Scandinavia and I realized how beautiful and amazing our world is and that I definitely want to travel it. From that moment I created a dream. When I was 19, I left to study to USA and then I realized that Europe is so small compared to humongous Unites States which is full of amazing opportunities. This was the beginning of my journey.

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