Local designer Isabelle Dunlop is a busy woman. When the Mount Pleasant resident isn't busy creating her eponymous women's clothing and accessories line, she's contributing vocals to Vancouver rockers Sex With Strangers, making cameos in Guilty About Girls, and starting a studio project called Combine the Victorious with her husband Mark Henning.

"I don't know what it all means, but I'm just trying to go with it and say 'yes' to everything," Dunlop tells the Straight by phone. "Fashion and music are pretty tied, so it kind of keeps my mind going. It keeps it inspired."

During the month of April, Dunlop will add pop-up shop curator to her list of current projects. Her spring 2011 collection, which she characterizes as "Twilight-meets-royal-wedding", has been chosen to share a converted warehouse space with local pop-art clothing line Hamburger Disco as part of the Rize Alliance Properties' pop-up shop initiative.

"They're giving the space free to local artists almost for the next year," Dunlop says. "I got April so I just kind of made my spring collection."

Dunlop's spring collection consists of 50 pieces, ranging from flowy feminine dresses to hand-knit sweaters. While Dunlop says that her favourite piece is a simple, 1960s-inspired dress in a fun floral print, she is just as excited about the key-themed necklaces she created.

"My uncle finds these keys over in Britain. They're amazing and they’re huge," she says. "They're sort of Georgian keys. Just the design even, all the notches in the key parts are really interesting, so I just made those into necklaces."

The necklaces are priced around $125, while dresses are between $200 and $240. Besides sourcing some vintage lace, which Dunlop turned into a few blouses (approximately $100 each), she found many of her fabrics just a few blocks over on Fraser Street before going to work in her studio at home.

"I had like three weeks," Dunlop says, recalling the short amount of time she had to whip up her collection. "The good thing is that I've been doing this for a while, so once you’ve got your block patterns, once you feel comfortable with it, it's just a matter of going at it."

Dunlop studied textile design at the Scottish College of Textiles in the early 1990s. When she moved to Vancouver from Scotland 17 years ago, she started selling clothes to Dream. Then, she owned The Block for eight years before deciding to flesh out her own line. While Dunlop has plans to open her own shop in a few years, she is happy appearing in pop-up shops like this one for the time being.

"I think it’s a really good test. Something may be a good idea in your mind, and then when you actually do it, just realizing how much work you put into it and how much work having a store actually is," she says. "I think it’s a really good idea to just test the waters and see if you can really put a full collection together."

Dunlop's designs are also available at Gastown boutique One of a Few, another retail space that has added its own pop-up shop recently. "I think for stores, it gives them a different energy and freshens things up a bit," Dunlop says about the growing trend of pop-up shops. "And it puts more responsibility on the designer too."

From now until the end of April, Dunlop hopes that people will drop by her shared pop-up shop, if not for the clothes, then at least to take a peek at the unique space.

"The space that the pop-up is in is actually beautiful. It's an old warehouse space," Dunlop says. "It's not filled up yet, and we're going to try and use the space as artistically as possible for as long as it exits."

The pop-up shop is located on 196 Kingsway Street. The shop is open Tuesday to Sunday from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m.

Visit Isabelle Dunlop's website for more details.

You can follow Michelle da Silva on Twitter at twitter.com/michdas.