Success in business. Do what you know
If you ask me whether I see myself in 20 years only as shoes designer, then I'll say that not only that I would like to do, many other things related to design along the way will be just fine. For example, I would like also to create clothes. The thing is that my mom, like many other Soviet women in old days not being able to buy nice, quality clothes (it was not in the stores, as well as many other things), she sewed her entire wardrobe herself, and mine too. At first she designed all my clothes ,and at the age of 11 I think, I was inventing designs by myself, and my mother sewed them, tormented by my fault-finding. I remember how we quarreled with her about length of dresses, I always wanted to make shorter and narrower than my mother allowed me to. My mother sewed even my school uniform that I designed, for which I always got in trouble at the school. It had the same cinnamon-color with a black apron, but much shorter and was a completely in a different than all the other schoolgirls uniforms. I remember our long and grueling trips to the shops in search of suitable fabrics, buttons and other small things, because everything was so hard to get, until the Soviet Union collapsed and stores were flooded with goods from abroad. Since then I have drawn, perhaps, a few hundreds of clothing designs that my mother still holds, and was way ahead of fashion in those days ( I kid you not!). But, what happened, happened, and just recently I decided to try to make a collection of clothing, in addition to shoes, while not having any experience in tailoring and no technical knowledge.
I decided to make this step two years ago in the happiest and at the same time a difficult moment for me, the birth of my beloved and wonderful daughter. Perhaps that is why I was not afraid of failure, the existence of my daughter inspires and has inspired me to any exploits! But I had a distant knowledge of the mass tailoring and I repeat, absolutely no technical knowledge. Instead of taking the time to learn and practice, I ran into this thing without thinking, and as a consequence received a complete failure. Although I asked my mom to come to my aid , just for the record, my parents live in Moscow and I am in Israel. Together we glued the printed patterns , and then cut out the fabrics. I was shifting between cutting fabrics and taking care of my daughter. I even caught my husband to work, we had to cut out fabric at night, because I came up with a huge collection. That's me, I always need to have all at once, I always have to go big.
Anyway, because the patterns were all wrong and as a rocky in this business I hired a horrible, horrible tailor, and now I have a pile of cut up rolls of fabric, not just a fabric, a fabric I specially brought from Italy. Nice, right?
The conclusion is : engage only in the field that you know very well, and if you do not know and really want to, you have to spend time studying and only after much trial and error, act. This is the only positive lesson I learned from all this myself for the future. The following presented to your attention (the first time publicly) a few designs made by me in different years. What do you say?
Write, and a good week to you!
Please subscribe and comment.
You can find more information about me at :
Lucky you! Because my Soviet mom did not sew, I had to learn sewing in my late twenties :( I like how you combine the futuristic and the ethnic in your sketches (at least that's how I interpret them).
ReplyDeleteI never thought about what my style is, but I like your definition. Thank you.
DeleteOh, I remember that USSR times very well.:))) I was a young girl living in a tiny town. My mom was wonderful mom, but she did not sew and did not knit neither. BUT!...We have a thick-thick book at home called 'Domovodstvo' of 1950 or something. This magic book was my first teacher. I even remember my first (and the only one) experience of making Sabo shoes at age 12 using the wooden sole (made by my father's friend from piece of wood. So excited, annoying and sick of this crazy idea I was :))), syntetic leather and nails. However despite I'm in my 40s now and I'm a computers professional, I want to return to my old shoe making childhood passion. :)))
ReplyDelete