So I had dinner with my friend Liane last night, and I realized that we never actually blogged on the site here about the amazing project we spent a good chunk of last year doing for Liane Mullin and her partner Desiree Gruber. And in talking about the project last night, and all that they’ve been accomplishing since launch, I was totally impressed, and realized that I SHOULD TOTALLY TELL YOU ABOUT IT.

So, in early 2008, we met with Desiree and Liane, who were, at the time (and still are) working at a company called Full Picture Entertainment. Full Picture is best known as the creators and producers of the hit show Project Runway. Full Picture is also a PR and marketing company, and their clients include Heidi Klum, the host of Project Runway. We also had the joy of meeting Jane Cha, the showrunner of Project Runway and another Full Picture team member. They had a vision for a new fashion and beauty site and community, as viewed through the prism of models. The top model’s inside secrets into fashion and beauty, as well as a compendium of their likes and dislikes. It would also include information about all the top models. Famous models would participate on the site.

When we met Liane and Desiree, they hadn’t gotten funding for their new startup yet, so off they went. They quickly met the people at Polaris, and they entered into a partnership. We re-bid for the work, introduced ourselves to Polaris, and got the gig. And by mid 2008, off we went.

We finished up and launched the site in time for spring fashion week in March of 2009.

Since then, the site’s been growing and the Modelinia team has expanded.They’ve built full content team, found themselves a CTO and a marketing exec. It was a joy to watch all of this, of course. As an entrepreneur, it was highly-rewarding to watch the modelinia team grow from 2 to where it is today. And it’s been fun, over the last 4 months, watching them improve the site, and the content, and learn what works and what doesn’t. Watching them acquire sponsors and grow their traffic, and improve their content. It’s been a fascinating look into online entrepreneurialism, and we’ve enjoyed it immensely.

Liane and Desiree have become great friends of ours, and we’re proud to have helped them fulfill their vision, building the initial build of the site, branding the company, designing the site, and offering a ton of flash and tech development.

They’ve brought it in house now, of course – many of our startup clients use us as a virtual team until they can get a dedicated team in place. It allows them to get going on development even before they’ve found a CTO. It’s never a perfect transition, but it allows for progress even in the face of daunting HR challeges. We think it worked pretty well here.

In any case, if fashion, beauty or beautiful models are your thing, check out Modelinia, or follow them on Twitter or any of the other social networks.

And thank you, Liane and Desiree, for letting us meet so many beautiful models. I think Toby’s stakeholder interview of Iman may be one of the best things we’ve ever done.