What does a native of Argentina who spent a year living in Utah decide to do after traveling across the Pacific Northwest in search of a permanent home in the U.S.?

She builds a women’s fashion boutique in Spokane County.

Sofia Mantoni recently opened LO boutique, at 11921 N. Division, in retail space directly across from Pine Acres Par 3 Golf Course, on U.S. 395.

“I’ve always been a design freak,” says Mantoni, originally an architect by trade. “That’s probably the best way to say it. “In my head I’d figure out what I wanted to wear, would search for it, then most of the time couldn’t find it. Finally, I just decided to design it myself.”

When she and her husband decided to relocate to the states, it was her husband who encouraged her to pursue fashion designing and not her original trade.

“He said, ‘You need to do this because you’re good,’’’ she says.

So good, in fact, that Mantoni was recently chosen as one of among 10 designers to present a collection of their designs Feb. 3-8 at New York Fashion week.

New York Fashion Week is held twice yearly to showcase international fashion collections to buyers, the public at large, and media. It’s one of four major fashion weeks in the world, with the three others occurring in London, Milan, and Paris.

Mantoni heard a local radio advertisement about Fashion Week, did online research and sent her application and design sketches to organizers.

“They said we were selected among thousands of applicants,” she says.

As for LO boutique, traffic has slowed since the holidays, but she’s hopeful for an uptick in business in the spring, she says.

LO boutique is open 10:30 a.m.-6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.