From the Studio

A year ago, I moved into my salon with 300 skirts. I just counted, and I have 384.

We’ve increased manufacturing this year, the skirt orders are getting larger, and the fabric orders are becoming more consistent. Things are growing, which is why I had been planning a Black Friday event in my head. I was going to call it Blue Friday, because the skirts arriving soon from India are natural indigo, a stunning blue. It was going to be small and easy: unlock the doors, and there are the new skirts.

Except...

Counting weekends, today is the 11th day of Olive’s fall break. This is a new invention. I don’t recall having a fall break in high school. And 11 days?!

It’s complicated when you work part-time and are a stay-at-home mom part-time. There are logistics, of course, but also emotions that complicate the scheduling. How much do I work? How much do I set aside to make intentional memories? With Olive three years from high school graduation, there seems to be almost more pressure to make every minute count.

But the business is the...

I’m in the process of sifting through almost 1,700 pages of journal entries from 2022–2025. I embarked on the journey in January of this year, after finishing a race of sorts: transitioning my designs from my hands, sewing one at a time, to a team in India.

Manju, Meera, Malo, Manju, and Aisha. My hand-drawn patterns, digitized. My love of fabrics evolving into sourcing handmade textiles in another country.

As I started reading, I took notes. I began a document titled “thesis,” with the idea of synthesizing the entries into usable lessons, and...

I'm here with some things I need to say - and haven't gotten around to.

Yes, there are new, delicious skirts. But some of you already have delicious skirts that need to be transitioned into colder weather, or simply dusted off while we figure out how to wear them again.

Enter: Consignment Styling Appointments.

60 minutes for $60, with $30 of that applied to a future purchase.

It's you, me, and the racks.

You'll learn things about fibers. You'll watch how and why I'm choosing what I choose. You'll start to understand...

My fashion show was last Saturday. When the dust settled, I had laundry, menu planning and groceries to take care of. Then a couple of days of personal/doctor appointments - some fun, some not so much.

Then back to work, to reset the salon and organize the chaos from the weekend.

But there was something I couldn’t put my finger on till midweek. And when I did name it, I was surprised to see it: sadness.

The event was wildly successful. I hoped we’d sell 1 Marimekko piece - we sold more...