Design Diary
I attended FIDM in downtown Los Angeles before Whole Foods moved in. It was the early 2000s and it felt small, like downtown was about to wake up from a nap. You could almost smell change in the air (among other things)—a budding new life growing inside the abandoned commercial buildings. It was a space mostly occupied by artists and homelessness. I felt alone when I landed. Streets emptied with the close of a workday. Sundays transformed my block into a ghost town. Community cropped up in the shadows. By the time I left, it felt like I was leaving a piece of myself behind, another specter to haunt the streets of DTLA as it endlessly morphed into something new.
The United Artist Building in DTLA. Once an office space for Texaco. Currently an Ace Hotel.
I found myself interning for a stylist while in school. He was kind in a world full of big personalities. I was invited to help out on multiple magazine shoots and a short-lived reality TV show on NBC about swimsuit models. I found these experiences to be a lesson in psychology as much as fashion. The people in the clothes, the photographers, the staff in the hotels we occupied, the passers-by, the publicists, me—we all couldn’t have been more different if we tried, and I loved that.
A few years later, I found myself working for a casual high-end Chicago transplant. Sporty, comfortable, soft—a uniform for daily life. When I close my eyes, I can still remember the clunky box-shaped computer monitor at my desk. The vintage furniture, the concrete floors, and a golden retriever named Lucky, all added to the family atmosphere in their home office. It was a wear multiple hats kind of job. As a 22-year-old, this was the perfect place to experience all the moving parts—design, trims, pattern-making, working with manufacturers, catalog design, graphic design, photoshoots (models, design, props, location, photography), store builds, retail—the list never ended. It’s where I learned my greatest asset was resourcefulness.
There was a sea change happening in the office around this time, and as the brand was acquired by a large corporation with a shiny new corporate strategy, the Great Recession hit. Unfortunately for all of us, the timing couldn’t have been worse. Just as we began to carve a path for major growth, the dream of expansion burst along with the housing bubble.
Currently, I am the head designer for a trend-forward juniors brand. This role has taken me all over the world, and in doing so, exposed me to lives and stories I would otherwise never know. The art of printmaking by hand, the bustling streets of Dehli, the gilded city of Antwerp, the manufacturers in Guangzhou, the futuristic harbor of Hong Kong, cherry blossom season in Tokyo, print houses in London, Parisian shopkeepers, sales teams in New York, and even, on occasion, a drive through the endless fields of Nebraska for a single meeting.
The stories I could tell.