In a month that celebrates Mother’s Day and the passing of Spring to Summer, I want to ask the world to remember some of mom’s wisdom. Life goes on…we must not forget to look to where we want to go. Everyone is struggling with Covid-19 and its disruption. My suppliers, my customers and I are chasing many fires right now. It is easy to become focused only on getting more information about what is going on in our communities, country, and industry. I have become overwhelmed with information, so I took this week to stop and remember some important wisdom my mother gave to me.
She was right of course. She told me that at a time when I was burning the candle at both ends, scaling the corporate ladder of a different industry. We must remember to take a breath and map out a plan to the next dream. We also owe that to our customers as artists and business owners. As we make our way out of this health catastrophe, we must remember to create something to be there on the other side of it. I hope all my fellow artisans, designers, and business owners remember that. If you can make it to the other side of this crises intact, make sure you have something for the world to dream of. I am not a fan of the over auspicious message of uber-luxury and it’s trappings (a luxury mega-yacht is of little value when you are gasping for breath on a respirator) , however I feel there will always be a place for every customer and their desires. The market will always cater to those desires and create around them.
I continue to focus on the lifestyles of my key customers and the dreams I know they will continue to have after we get through this crisis. The crazy, high speed pace of fashion has long been a flagrant pain point for many a designer and business owner. Nowhere is it more obvious than in the growing number of fashion lines and the rapid decrease in design, quality, stability of collections. Many say these things are no longer important to you, the customer. They are wrong. The speed of big fashion has commoditized creativity and forced quality to the underground. The customer has forgotten what to expect or demand.
Now that the world has come to a pause…perhaps it will give designers at big brands a little more time to explore their dreams. To really have the time to think out what they want from their mood boards, designs and final product. I get extremely excited to think of what other designers will do with the extra time. I am taking the time from cancelled trunk shows to focus on what I want to see in my products for the next year. It is giving me a little more time to refine techniques, think through materials, and create new visions for my customers to immerse in.
To do that without the ever-berating stick of “the next fashion season” is a breath of fresh air. Even as an indie-brand with in-house production, I still feel the pressure of the constant trend-change the industry tries to force on everyone. It takes an extreme amount of resistant to push myself to create lasting designs and to focus on quality.
How often we forget the subtle words of mother and mother nature… they both have their way of telling us…SLOW DOWN AND BREATH. How many of us will listen?
Hope you have a happy Mother's Day and may Summer bring better times.
