Finding Beauty

Lately, my sense of life's ebb and flow seems heightened. 

My very first solo, in-person event has come and gone. The preparation was a roller coaster of emotions from nearly having my entire collection stolen to not being able to get into the venue to running out of fabric for some of the styles. 

I was on autopilot preparing for the event, and it came and went in a blur, but I couldn’t have asked for a better event. It’s funny how much preparation went into a 2 1/2 hour event, and suddenly, my everyday routine is back to being somewhat quiet again. 

In no less than 12 hours after the event, I hopped on a plane to enjoy a week-long vacation in Bald Head Island, NC with my family - another significant festivity that I’d been looking forward to since November 2022. Yet again, it was another event that came and went in a blink. 

Those two big events reinforced how nothing - good or bad - lasts. Life is constantly moving.

I never understood the idea that “time is an illusion”. Maybe so, but it’s never failed to keep moving forward. That idea has never been a comfort to me. 

The best we can do is enjoy life’s pleasures around us right now. One of my favorite of life's pleasures? Beauty. I plan to soak in as much of that as possible in preparation for the next collection, and because of this, you can plan to see a strong connection between fashion and art from me in the coming Fall months.

Design can be very technical, and the technicalities can become somewhat stressful for someone visually minded like myself, especially when what I love most is creating beautiful things. I find myself yearning to paint, sketch, or make a funky mixed media collage because it allows my brain to dump beauty onto a piece of paper instead of fine tuning the fit of a dress or working to get a neckline to lay flat. 

 A stressed brain doesn’t thrive when it’s time to be creative. I told myself that post event I’ll allow myself to “play” again. To paint, drape fabric, clip magazines, find pretty beads - whatever my inner artist child feels like doing so that I can bring the beautiful ideas in my head out into the world and hopefully into the next collection. After all, that is what the SS23 Jovial collection is all about. :) Isn’t it funny how we can start to map out our life's story through what we create?

Beauty is one of my favorite out of all of life’s pleasures, and I feel it is my responsibility to bring the ideas in my head out into the real world. The fact that nothing lasts can really be a beautiful thing. One idea, mood, emotion, relationship, or stage in life leads to the next. Once we get on the right path, the journey is really quite exciting.