Our Story
Early Sewing Talent
Julie began sewing when she was approximately 9 years old. Her mother used to make many of the clothes that she wore, and they weren’t fuddy duddy clothes either. They were very “hip” styles as her family lived just 30 miles East of San Francisco and Flower Power, Hip Huggers, Mini Skirts, and Hot Pants were all the rage. After all, it was 1966.
Julie asked her mother if she would teach her how to sew. That was all it took, Julie never looked back.
Julie started off by sewing a very simple tunic dress for herself (age 9) and by the time she was a senior in high School she was making her father a pair of dress slacks and a Pendleton Wool plaid tailored sport coat, where the plaid of every seam, pockets, collar, and sleeves matched. You couldn’t even tell where the seams were located. She entered the outfit in a sewing contest put on by the fabric store, “New York Fabrics” (more recently known as “Joanne’s Crafts”). Her father proudly walked down the runway at the Saint Francis Hotel in San Francisco and shortly thereafter Julie’s name was being called, asking her to come to the podium on stage, where she was presented with the winning prize a brand-new Viking Sewing machine. Her High School, Concord High School (located in Concord, California), for the first time in the school’s history, created a Special Award that was given to Julie during the school’s Senior Awards Banquet, (these awards were usually given to school athletes that excelled during their tenure at the school) but the school decided that Julie’s Apparel Design work deserved to be honored by the school.
Mastery in Design
From there, Julie applied for one of the prestigious openings in the well-known Apparel Design Program (2-year program) offered by Diablo Valley College, to only 50 students across the USA each year. She submitted her application in June of 1975 and her application was accepted and she passed all the testing that Summer. She began her studies in the Fall of 1975. By June of 1977, she had earned an Associates of Arts Degree in Fashion Design and Merchandising.
Throughout the years, Julie has created some absolutely amazing clothing and costume designs. Her work is impeccable and always exhibits a class of talent and skills that is rarely matched. She has created suits of armor from scratch and luxurious fully beaded evening gowns from scratch, too, even creating her own guipure lace fabric using her embroidery machine.
She has always dreamed that one day she would be able to create a collection of clothing that was unique to anything else that had ever been seen on the market but she didn’t live near any of the big world renowned Fashion districts such as those in New York or Los Angeles, so she always felt like she was a step too far away.



The Wedding Dress Collection
In November of 2023, she had an idea that had been floating around in her head for the past several years, and since she was now retired, she had time to devote to the ideas she had for a collection of very unique wedding dress designs. She sat down and began to describe each of the dresses, including the color scheme, the fabric patterns and prints, and the different styles and silhouettes that each dress would feature. She created an extremely detailed verbal description of each dress. She realized that this was all well and good, but the average person may not have enough of a grasp of the technical language that she used to describe the different aspects of each dress and she wondered how in the world was she going to be able sketch out all of these designs by hand, as it would take her a long time to do this. Then, an idea popped into her head and she asked herself, “I wonder if generative AI programs are being used in the Fashion Industry for this purpose?”
She started to do some research on this subject and before you know it, she found the information she was looking for as she learned that designers in the fashion industry had been using generative AI programs for quite some time. She also found out that the US Patent Office had been making forward movements in this area, as well, and they were even beginning to grant Patents to artists in this field. They determined that authorship could be established for certain works where it was obvious that the creator could easily establish that they were the original source of the designs as nothing even close existed prior to the author’s designs. That was it!!! She knew that she could prove that nothing like the designs in her collection existed prior to the first publication of her collection in November of 2023 on Facebook.
Julie ran a “Proof of Concept” Campaign on Facebook in January of 2025, where she garnered more than 2.1 million engagements from people around the world. She felt like maybe this was her chance. She began the steps to create a business centered around this wonderful collection of unique wedding dress designs. Julie is part Native American (from the Swampy Cree) which when combined with her great love of the many different Polynesian cultures around the world, she was able to create a collection of wedding dress designs unlike anything you have ever seen before.
But, before she went out too far over the ends of her skis, she felt like she should run another Proof-of-Concept campaign, just in case the first one was a fluke. She ran another Proof-of-Concept Campaign in June of 2025 (just a couple of months ago), and much to her delight, she found out that the first campaign was not a fluke, not at all. This time, her collection registered more than 3.3 million engagements in under 6 days. She had succeeded in her goal. She wanted to create a beautiful collection of unique wedding dress designs that represented many of the different native cultures around the world and according to her millions of fans from all corners of the Earth, she succeeded in doing exactly that. Her collection is called “The Royal Samoan Inspired Wedding Dress Design Collection © 2023 – 2026″ by designer, Julie Carlson.
We hope you enjoy the collection. We are now ready to take orders for some of the dresses in the collection and we are starting out with the Top Ten favorite designs. Please follow the ordering instructions as our dresses will all be custom-made according to your measurements. Thank you everyone!
Short BIOGRAPHY on Julie Carlson, Owner of Cocoa and Ivory Bridal Couture and the creator of the Royal Samoan Inspired Wedding Dress Design Collection © 2023 - 2026 ©2023 – 2026.
Hello,
you.
We are so glad you found us.
You deserve to wear a dress as unique and beautiful as you on your special day.