2020; PROGRESS THROUGH ADVERSITY
This year is weird. Here’s a little on how we’re riding it out,
XO SV
A SHIFT IN FOCUS
As the days in shut down turned into weeks, it became clear that we couldn’t keep rolling with the regular fashion calendar; a pause had been enforced.
How can we be excited about our new SS20 collection, still waiting in the wings, while the mood rightly is only one of concern for health and financial stability?
How could we even fulfill any new SS20 orders when our supply chain and production partners are closed and shelter in place keeps being extended?
A new collection and market week trips, when we can barely leave our homes, feel like frivolous and unrealistic luxuries - for this year at least.
It became clear that what was formerly the right thing to do, was now not going to be possible.
We needed to pivot.
GETTING THROUGH TODAY
Living only for this day, is how I am keeping some semblance of normality.
Leaning only into the plans that are keepable, occasionally checking in with the future, but shifting where it’s clearly not going to work anymore - and having to be ok with that, is the new reality.
Everyday I read the room - my feelings, what’s going on in the news, the mood on social - to see what feels right both personally and for the business.
Some days I can barely form a sentence, and if all that can be done is nothing, that is ok.
Some days, a wash of “how are the bills going to get paid?”, or “there has been SO much work to get here, I cannot rest and I need to do something” washes over me and I ideate.
To avoid waste - wasted time, money and supplies, our product is made to order. But then, what can we offer during a completely unforeseen shut down?
This creates a potentially catastrophic consequence for this tiny business, but instead, we had to rethink and pivot because catastrophic consequences are not an option.
A VISION FOR TOMORROW
We needed to change how we’d done things in the past; I needed to rediscover my own resources and tap back into the capability and determination it took to get this business off the ground, all on our own, just two years ago.
What this situation is teaching me personally, is the fragility of normality as we knew it.
Because of this, today - and everyday coming out of this, I want to indulge in what makes my brain tingle and feel alive.
I’ve been taking the time, because I now have it, to do work that is more step by step vs. immediately gratifying. To work through the process and reacquaint myself with parts of this business we started to outsource - with the added challenge of supplies being limited to only what we had on hand.
Evolving newness out of old and allowing creativity that I’d talked myself out - or that we paid someone else to do as I worried about the next thing, has found me tapping back into a part of myself I’ve quietened.
This has manifested in a couple of different ways; getting my hands all inky and dyeing shirts we have in stock from a collaboration with Amber Vittoria, has been fulfilling and exciting - each its own one off. A way to make something timeless feel fresh, new and of the moment.
Each shirt a multi-part, hands-on process that can’t be short cut. That you have to stick with and work through and the result is a surprise each time. A metaphor for the situation we’re all in now.
I’ve also created a new clog pattern named Iris, after my nan who passed away late last year, that can be made at home, 100% by hand without die cutting. Leveraging hides and offcuts of leather + soles we have in inventory, this style is a new way to not only continue to avoid waste but to deliver product immediately, safely and be 100% in touch with the whole of our business again.
If this ongoing situation is teaching me anything, it is that I don’t want to return to normal, I want something better. More intentional.
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Iris