Like Marilyn Monroe in a Sundress

The other day, I called up my friend Joanne. I hadn’t talked to her since my Mardi Gras party, and I knew she had taken a trip to New York shortly afterwards.

We dispatched my status update quickly. I shared a few details around my efforts to build traffic for this blog and find people who’d be interested in Attitude of Gratitude writing workshops. We skimmed the topic of my diet and the progress she had made with her personal trainer, an ex-marine who’s not afraid to admit he’s partial to Pilates. Then I settled in for a good New York story.

The hotel she stayed at in Murray Hill, which she thought was going to be posh, turned out to be like a space-saving dorm-o-tel for student travelers, furnished by IKEA. She relayed how she found the perfect pair of black pants at Bergdorf-Goodman, a retail empire I have never ventured into, after finding the perfect New York type of sales lady. You know, the kind that almost immediately announces, I know just the thing – and does. We laughed.

Then she told me the story of her Made in America dream.

Joanne is a very special lady who has taken to a common calling for women and re-invented it.  She loves retail, but she loves to do it her way. She loves quality fabrics; how different elements of a person’s look might come together. She has a knack for inward thinking, looking to her own experiences of fashion and shopping, and also looking outward, scanning the Internet or taking special side adventures when traveling, to think of ways she could turn what she values into a successful business.  

She ran a shoe business some years ago, starting with both a clear vision and a willingness to adapt. She ran a small storefront carrying lines she loved, securing arrangements, at some points, with manufacturers that could make nice knock-offs of favorite designer offerings. She fine-tuned her niche to focus on wedding shoes, developed an attractive and functional website, then ended up closing her storefront and doing extremely well selling wedding shoes online. Who’d have thunk it?  

As I listened to her tell me her plans for starting a new clothing line -- the types of styles and fabrics she’d feature, her emphasis on classic over trendy, how her idea sprang from her own unfulfilled desire for attractive, no-fuss day dresses that would be wonderful for spontaneous trips – I had to smile at her enthusiasm. When she told me about how she was led by a Wall Street Journal article to contact a small garment factory in New York during her trip, I was filled with admiration for her spunk.

Who wouldn’t want to look like Marilyn Monroe in one of those classic sundresses? she asked rhetorically after talking about her line’s name, how she plans to handle photography and sell the line without opening a store, how she worked out minimums with the factory manager she met based on the feature in the WSJ. Real quality, classic fashions MADE IN AMERICA, she went on. That’s a great story.

After she closed her shoe business, she went into a sort of cocooning mode. Not being clear about what she wanted to do next, she sat with her emptiness until she knew what she wanted to do. And when she was ready, I could tell she was filled with conviction as well as ideas. I have no doubt she is going to make this happen. The joy that pulsed through her at the notion of making something new a concrete, marketable, job-generating enterprise – was palpable.

And I found myself falling in love with her creation; a concept for a line of clothing, and I am not even a fashionista. Bringing something new into the world is no small thing.