How I Started My Slow Fashion Label | Part I
I never started out to create my own label, at least full-time anyway.
It all started when I was working full-time as a womenswear designer for one of the biggest department stores in Australia.
I’ll be honest, it was a fast-paced, stressful environment. And yes, there were definitely some ‘Devil-wears-Prada’ moments. I was leaving home at 7am and coming home at 7.30pm, spending around 3 hours commuting on public transport in and out of the city.
One long weekend I decided to make myself a top. Mind you I hadn’t sewn anything for about 2 years! The last thing I made was my wedding dress and that was an intense project, and thinking back now probably put me off sewing for a while (silk and beaded fabrics are not the easiest to work with!)
So this long weekend I sat in the back room, set up my dusty sewing machine, started drawing a blouse design and went from there. I marked the pattern straight onto the fabric (who needs to trial anything? ha, this will be totally easy and won’t need any alterations….said no seamstress ever) and cut it out quickly.
I had no overlocker, so it was zig-zag stitching for me (and maybe a raw edge here and there) and before too long I had a blouse. It was exactly what I loved. Puffy sleeves, draped tie-waist, cream textured fabric and an open neckline.
I called her The Audrey Blouse.
I shared every step on my personal Instagram stories and I’d never had so many people reply saying how much they were enjoying watching the process of a garment being designed, drafted and sewn up. I think because it’s so familiar to me I’d never thought that showing what takes place would interest anyone.
I had comments like ‘You should have your own brand, I love your designs!’ to which I would reply ‘Maybe one day, who knows!’.
I’d always counter with the sentiment that ‘…the average age of a designer is 42, plenty of time.’
No idea where I absorbed that statistic, or whether it’s actually true, but it was an automatic response when people, friends, family asked me when I’d be starting my own label. I guess it was almost an excuse to not put that pressure on myself.
Little did I know this long weekend would plant a seed of possibility in my mind that had been buried deep and covered with doubt and fear.
Once I posted the final blouse I had a few friends asking if they could place an order. To which I was delighted (and completely surprised).
So I quickly set up a PayPal, a crappy website and thought I might as well register a business name and get an ABN all in one weekend.
Over weekends and late nights I slowly made one blouse after another. Eventually added another design called The Daphne Blouse and just kept putting one foot in front of the other.
I commuted, worked all day designing for other brands, commuted home and spent the small window of time in the evening making my own designs on my little sewing machine in the back room.
After a while my orders were stacking up and I was making clothes for people who had found me on Instagram.
I started thinking
