Leave the Kids Alone

The world of fashion remains a place that is unrelated to my experience of clothing. I have always just loved to sew. No-one led me to this realization nor tried to guide the path of my development and education too closely. I had a personal, intense interest that I pursued privately in my bedroom at home, outside of school hours.  

Because the school I attended had a mandatory uniform, I had nowhere to wear the things I made and no one to see them. I would usually find my way downstairs at a certain point in the evening because I wanted to show my parents something I had constructed. They always congratulated and praised me in a way I felt satisfied with - not too much and not too little. They acknowledged my work enough to affirm that I was doing something of value, but it didn’t enter the territory of over-praise that the parenting culture of the moment often slips into. 

There is so much discussion in the media these day about parents micromanaging their children’s lives - worrying that if they don’t enrol them in every available extra curricular activity and expose them to every obscure experience possible, that their child is not going to reach their full potential. Humans are way more complicated than that. Kids find a way. They know what they like. Leave the kids alone.

If there was one thing that helped create the right environment for me to develop my skill and interest in sewing and clothing it was that nobody cared. In other areas of my life it felt like everyone was too involved. Small scholastic, musical and dance achievements were extrapolated either into grand future successes or were seen as terrifying premonitions of future failure at life. When it came to sewing, my parents didn’t see my often questionable efforts as the work of some kind of prodigal fashion genius whose growth they should harness and direct. I was just a teenager, quietly immersed in sewing alone in my room. There was no social value to what I was doing, no culture to support or validate it, no place to display it, and no way of assessing it. It was the one thing I had completely to myself outside of the hyper-controlled world in which I existed.

I taught myself to sew almost entirely through trial and error. I made a lot of mistakes. A LOT. I basically destroyed clothing and fabric for the first ten years of my sewing development. After a couple of years I had exhausted my mom’s closet of things I could “cut up”. Luckily, I discovered Value Village around that time and it allowed me access to unlimited, affordable raw materials with which to experiment.

I would buy piles of clothing, often vintage, take it all apart, look at how it was made, and put things back together in a different way. I repeated this basic activity for years. By the end of high school I knew how to make just about anything. Not “properly”, but well enough. I was totally reckless with my experimentation because there was no one watching and no one to judge me.  

The mother of one of my good friends was saying recently that she and all her peers who were given sewing training in high school in the 1960’s were cripplingly afraid of not doing things “correctly” when sewing. In order to create an acceptable quality garment there were specific skills you were supposed to master - the mitered corner, the vent, the bound pocket. The result was an environment where it was impossible to take any risks when it came to clothing construction because anything that didn’t fall within the prescribed guidelines was considered to be wrong. I always feel incredibly sad hearing this type of story because sewing and clothing construction is a source of such joy and freedom for me. Despite what many teachers and mentors will tell you, there is no “right” when it comes to creation, and presuming to judge the value of someone else’s work based solely on how well they stay within the lines is not particularly broad minded.

I have alway felt absolutely fearless when it comes to anything to do with constructing clothing. I would say that I am borderline reckless when it comes to developing patterns and working on the fit of muslins. I don’t agonize and second guess myself, I have no sense of shame at not doing it “right”- I just do it and judge later. As a result I am fairly prolific when it comes to pattern and muslin development. Recklessness hasn’t always served me well in life, but in this case it is a very valuable tool.

I didn’t receive any official training or much “interference” in my work by others until I was almost in my 20’s and by then I had developed my own style and my own approach to constructing clothing. At that point I had the confidence and skill to easily integrate all the boring technical stuff that institutions lean so heavily on. I am so thankful that this thing that I have loved so purely since I was a child was spared the judgement of peers, the assessments of professors, and the advice of parents while in its tender developmental stages. It allowed me to find the beauty and freedom in it early on without it being turned into something that was “work”. We all have the natural ability to find the right path for ourselves if we are just left alone to follow our genuine interest.

Dodged Another Bullet

This time of year, in the weeks after the bulk of the new collection has gone out to stores, I live under a cloak of anxiety as I wait for the stock to be received and to hit racks across the country. It’s always the same thing: I fear that the new collection is going to bomb. Everyone will hate it. People will open the boxes as they arrive and say “what is this garbage she sent me?” It will signal the beginning of the end for me: my ruination, my humiliation. 

Logically, this makes no sense. All the stock that goes out has been ordered in advance, and I find myself, more often than not, personally going over every item before it gets packed. Despite this, fear creeps its way in.

I read a biography of Albert Camus several years ago and something he said has stuck with me since. He believed that creative people should never publicly express doubt about their own work. I can’t remember what justification he had for his view, but what seems important to me now is that it forced me to think about what my own opinion is on the subject. I feel more compelled, as time goes by, to share the doubts I have about my own work. Is this the right thing to do? I feel like one of the most important things I have to offer as a creative person is the willingness to be honest about my experience of life and find it tragic to see other people in fashion trying to fool everyone into thinking that they have it all figured out.

I’m totally lost. There, I said it. I’m lost and we’re all lost. I consider it a great strength to be able to admit it. It doesn’t mean you can’t still do excellent work in the face of futility and hopelessness. For me, clothing is intensely personal. It’s the main place I see and interpret beauty in the world and that’s why the whole process is so complicated.

The truth is that I have great confidence in my work. I obsess over it and do whatever is necessary to make sure that everything going out under the BoNA label is as good as I can possibly make it. If I didn’t believe I was creating something of value and integrity, I don’t think I would be comfortable sharing my doubts about it. 

“Dodged another bullet”: That’s how I feel each season after the new collection has been received by stores and reports start trickling in that it is doing well. To my indescribable relief, I realize that things are going to be fine and my world feels at peace once again.  

I think most people who make their creative work the centre of their lives never get to a point where they think they have made it, no matter what level of success they achieve.  The creative urge is a chronic disease. In fashion, you submit two collections a year for a check-up but there is no curing the source of the trouble. It is the striving to create the ultimate version of what you imagine that keeps you going.

Depression and Creativity

My year is split into two design seasons - Fall/Winter and Spring/Summer. In each six month period I spend about 7 weeks doing muslins (design mock-ups in raw cotton) and 6 weeks putting together samples (the finished designs in the actual fabric). These days, Birds of North America collections can easily comprise 30 styles a season so during my 3 month muslin/sample time things need to progress at a fairly swift pace.  

A lot of the time the process rolls along smoothly. The muslins satisfy the vision I have in my head, samples pass my rigorous but somewhat intangible fit/look/construction requirements and the collection takes shape in a generally satisfying way. Sometimes things don’t work out and a style will not come together no matter what I do. It stresses me out because there is so little room for movement in the schedule that time of year and it can cause a delay of several days if I get stuck on something.

In that moment when I feel that I am failing, there is nothing positive anyone can say about my work, no praise that would make me feel like what I am doing is ok. My thoughts grow dark and pessimistic, and if I’m not able to recognize what is happening, it will result in a downward spiral of feelings of failure, hopelessness and anger. I have often found myself trying to cope with these feelings by curling up in bed in the fetal position for hours on a weekday afternoon, trying to disappear from life. It’s not a lingering thing generally - more of an intense 2-6 hour plunge into darkness. I would categorize it as a type of depression. Whatever it is, it’s not productive and not fun.  
  

On the other hand, when things are going well with my muslin and sample process, I feel fantastic. It’s what I imagine a manic high to feel like. I feel invincible, like I can do anything and solve any problem. It definitely feels better than the other side of the experience, but it is still an emotional state that is neither realistic nor truthful.

I have been trying to figure out for many years why I have these intense reactions to good and bad work days. It seems obvious that I have my sense of self worth tied very closely to my work. I am a perfectionist, and when I’m not able to meet the level of perfection I desire, I feel like I have failed. These days, I am coming to accept that this is maybe just how I work.

I believe that in order for a person to be forced to seek a creative outlet, there needs to be some kind of imbalance in their life. It is when we feel lost, dissatisfied and unhappy that we search hardest for answers. I am slowly coming to cherish my seemingly messed up reactions because I know that my creativity comes from the point of intersection of suffering and delight in my experience of life.  

I am no stranger to depression, but my reaction towards those feelings has changed in the last five years. I feel I have found a way to understand and find value in this particular type of “flash” depressive state by integrating the episodes into my creative process. Embracing and sometimes even welcoming them has allowed me the space to look at what my own mind is trying to tell me. The concepts for the “In Situ” shots for each collection often come out of an afternoon spent in bed, peering over the edge of the abyss of meaningless.

I feel I need to say that depression is different for everyone, and there is a wide range of causes and degrees of severity, therefore there is no one right way to deal with it. The kind of insight I have been able to find is probably more accessible when it comes to the shorter, more intense variety of episode than a chronic, long-term manifestation. Depression is still an unavoidable symptom of the human condition and therefore a part of human life. When it arises for me, I am grateful to be able to recontextualize it through fashion and deal with it in a creative way.

The Politics of Sizing

There is a lot of discomfort when it comes to discussing and producing larger sizes in the fashion industry. The majority of lines basically ignore the over 40% of the North American population that fall outside of a size 12. Many designers don’t even offer the equivalent of a size 12.

It’s common knowledge that women who fall above what is considered to be a “normal” size range are completely ghettoized when it comes to fashion. They have to shop at different stores and have to settle for fewer options and a lower level of service in general. The problem is that what is considered to be “normal” is no longer normal, and the fashion industry has yet to catch up or catch on.

My epiphany about size range came a year ago at a large semi-annual sale that we participate in called Braderie de la Mode in Montreal. Working as a designer, and primarily in the studio, I am not often present at the point of sale. It was an eye opening experience for me to see who was actually trying on the clothes and how they were fitting in terms of size.

One thing I noticed was that women tend to shop with friends in groups of 2-5. Within the group there is usually a range of body types and sizes and there is often at least one person who falls outside of the size 12 that is the upper limit for most designer lines.

Up until our spring/summer collection came out last spring, the largest size we offered was a size 12, which is equivalent to what we call our XL. Watching groups of women try on our clothes and seeing someone in the group not being able to fit into the largest size we offered was devastating for me. I felt like a complete jerk. It was obvious that our not having their size made them feel humiliated and defeated. Many women would either get angry or would apologize to me as if they had failed somehow. I felt unequivocally that it was me who had failed, not them.

After I got home and had time to process the experience, I was surprised at how emotional I felt about it. The whole reason I love this job is that I am able to share my vision and enthusiasm for clothing with other people and to create the same excitement in them. I felt like I had failed personally not only in not having clothes that fit everyone who wanted to try them on, but in seeing women who admired the line being shut out from enjoying the whole experience with their friends. I decided after that event that we would start to do what we could at Birds of North America to be more inclusive when it came to sizing.

As with anything that is not the “norm”, there are a million reasons designers say they can’t or won’t offer a larger size range. It is very hard to make a living with a small line of clothing in Canada, and I understand that a lot of designers try to cut costs whenever possible, but for me, all the reasons to choose not to do a broader size range have never quite added up to something I felt like I could get on board with.

Common rhetoric among independent fashion designers is that larger sizes of clothing use more fabric and are therefore much more expensive to produce. This is only a bit true. For a line like Birds of North America, which is produced entirely in Montreal, the bulk of the cost of the garment comes from the construction (basically the sewing). There is an increase in grading and cutting charges whenever any extra sizes are added, but in my opinion, it’s not a deal breaker.

When it comes to costing a garment, my philosophy is to look at the big picture. Like most lines, we sell the most pieces of clothing in sizes S and M. I have never seen this as a reason to base our entire production around these sizes. I don’t see the additional cost of producing a size 16 dress as being a 30% increase in cost for a size 16 dress, I see it as being a 5% cost increase on that particular style of dress in all sizes. Yes, if we only produced sizes XS-L we would make more money, but I didn’t get into this business to get rich. I do this because I love what I do and I want to share it, and I consider an inclusive size range a part of being able to offer good service to people who like our designs.

Because we are a small business, we have had to start modestly with the addition of two sizes in order to ease into the process. We did a trial run of five styles in sizes 14 and 16 this past spring season and have tweaked the fit a bit for fall. This fall, based on demand, we will have 11 styles available in size 14 and 3 styles in size 16. We will definitely be expanding the availability as interest increases. At the moment there is so little available even above a size 10 in most independent lines of clothing that I think people in the size 12 and up range have stopped even looking.

We are committed to offering these sizes and to adding more as they catch on. Help us get the word out!

Public vs. Private

I've always felt conflicted about the location of the border between the personal and public in my life. We’re all guilty of trying to control how the world perceives us, to some extent, and I'm no exception. The parts of us that we keep best concealed contain what we believe to be the truth of ourselves. Ironically, the parts we choose to expose publicly speak volumes about what we're trying to conceal.

The whole concept of personal blogging makes me very uncomfortable. With my work, I get to display the finished result of my efforts after I 've had time to scrutinize it for imperfections and buff it to a shine. I don’t want anyone to know that I struggle, even though I do struggle. A LOT. It is constant. Part of it comes from a refusal to compromise, and part of it is just the result of being alive. We all struggle. It’s the one thing we have in common.

I'm also uncomfortable with what seems to be the growing tendency to publicly indulge in an inflated sense of self-importance. The only thing that redeems the endless self discussion inherent in a personal blog is the act of being honest, and it redeems it exquisitely if done with courage and humility.

The line of clothing, Birds of North America, is the vortex of my life. I love, I hurt, I worship, I rage, I forgive, all through my work. Good creative work requires, above all, relentless self analysis and honesty. I invite you into my experience, not as a fashion designer, but as a woman who is trying to find meaning and sense in an existence where it is often elusive.

We all have to face the beautiful and horrific stuff that comprises this life and each of us has to make our own sense of it. I am extremely grateful for all the people who love and support Birds of North America and who are moved enough to wear our clothes on their bodies and to confront this crazy world in them.

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Pour mes chères lecteurs francophones: Comme vous saviez, ou peut-être pas, l‘anglais est la langue dans lequel je peux mieux m’exprimer. C’est très important pour moi de pouvoir communiquer mes idées d’une facon claire et je sais que je vais mieux réussir en anglais. J’espère que vous considériez quand même me suivre si ca vous intéresse.

J’accueillerais toujours des commentaires en francais avec plaisir!