It's Not All Catwalks, Caviar, and Champagne

Everyone thinks being a fashion designer is all about catwalks, caviar, champagne, and diva behavior. But in fact, it's all about problem solving, factory issues, and pick n' pack shipping. There's nothing glamorous about being a real designer or one that gets down on their knees to baste a hem or take trans-Atlantic calls with the Hong Kong factory at 11:00 at night. I wish I was sitting in a fabulous design studio overlooking the Champs-Elysees making delicate brush strokes on my illustrations and sipping cappuccino that my assistant fetched for me. Yeah, right! Unfortunately the reality is the craziness that goes on behind the scenes and all the production problems, bad checks, and bounced boxes. But I'm happy to say, that's where all the fun begins as a real designer. There's nothing more satisfying than tackling a problem and putting it to bed.

I recently had such a catastrophe that thankfully was diverted in less than 48 hours! One of my favorite dresses for Fall, the cuter than cute merino baby doll dress pictured above, came in with a major pressing problem. All 315 of these puppies came in with the empire waist gathers pressed open and flat which created the most unflattering bump at the high hip. But the most distressing part was I didn't discover the problem until I had shipped out 130 of them to my customers. Yikes! Thankfully, one of my loyal clients noticed the problem and notified me. There's nothing worse than the awful empty-pit feeling in the stomach when I proceeded to unpack a bunch of my production from Hong Kong to find these unsightly bumps. I was mortified! My favorite dress looked like hell. After a lengthy conversation with my overseas factory late at night, we concluded the problem resulted in the pressing stage at the factory and it was not a knitting or design problem. The end result being that I needed to pull all 130 dresses off the selling floor and quickly (literally in 24 hours) get these dresses repressed to perfection and reshipped. I had to schlep all 315 of these dresses to Gardena for repressing (boy, do I need an intern, and one with a car!).

Yeah, problem solved! Now all my stores have the correct dresses on the selling floor and I can sit back and know that they will sell themselves. So yes, being a designer can sometimes be glamorous (photo shoots, fashion shows, and publicity galore), but the real deal is getting through the bumps and hurdles that come with the job. You don't too often hear about the back-room catastrophes at Marc Jacobs or Chanel, but rest a sure, they do happen to all of us designers, big and small.