All I know for certain is nothing stays certain.
The decision to make our show far more intimate than any show we’ve done previously feels more right than ever. When we did a show for 800 in 2022, it was the first time back on the runway after Covid. It felt like the time for a big celebration - and the presence of so many stores, editors, and customers we’d built relationships with amped up the volume. It was pure energy. This season feels more like a family reunion of sorts. An intimate family.
At 1:50am I wake up to see my husband’s phone light on. He’s tapping away. I drift back to sleep. At 5:10am I wake up, Traci is letting me know one of our models moved from confirm to pending. I get irritated, I know the culprit in the runway schedule. I move to email and my irritation is immediately erased. I see what my husband was writing deep into the night. He was reaching out to our business partners in Poland. Scary times. And at 1pm today I have a meeting with Karolina, our head of costing - she moved here from Poland a few years ago. Life is complicated and there’s always something to put things in perspective. We’ll just find another model, whatever.
But on to the last 24 hours….
9:10am my train to Grand Central is delayed but I run in to Keturah waiting for the 4/5. Good, we can ride together and go over tomorrow’s Style Class. She pretends she’s thrilled to talk business on the train and I appreciate her for that.
10am: model casting starts. I’m simultaneously receiving videos from the production team who’s at the venue doing a walk run though. Derek is concerned because there are big holes in the lineup the way I had it organized. I rolled my eyes that they insisted on an early walk through and now I’m relieved. I have to change my direction -literally - and I get to change it now when it’s still easy to do so. Production team, you were right.
11am: Julia our intern from Mexico City comes in to show me proposed paper shades for a wall we’re building. I can feel Traci’s eyes boring in to me - she is a better judge here so I pass this off to her. Now she has her phone out and showing pictures to Julia from our trip to Berlin - this is helping everyone get on the same page.
12pm: Cassius just slobbered on Traci’s black jeans again. She’s pissed. I told her she has a dog too - she says yes and reminds me that Jasper stays home and doesn’t attend the model fittings. Point taken. But Cassius still gets to come to work - I’ll get her a tarp tomorrow to throw on her lap.
2pm: Lunch - a large Thai green curry soup and a bottle of water. Ashbys, the deli across the street. It was just under $10 which seems shocking right now. This is the new bargain.
3pm: Style Class - run through with Keturah - what she’s proposing. And why. I show her the fall items I had ordered from the warehouse and she asked why I ordered all 00’s. Fuck. Thank god I’m not my own employee, I would have been fired 100 times over. Keturah asks if I’ll be on with her. I’ll try.
4pm: TCL - Tibi Creative Lab - the TCL team is over at the studio working on table designs - I can’t decide yet if the look is a bit gritty and still elegant or if it’s homemade and naive - but not in a good way. I need to see IRL, I tell them I’ll run over tomorrow.
5pm: We’re ready to assign looks to models. We can start confirming - this is way earlier than normal. I ask our casting agent Jon, whom I’ve worked with now for every show since 2006, if it’s stressing him out that he’s not stressed. He said yes, then popped an Atavin.
6pm: I’m on the floor of my office sketching and painting - it’s something for show. But we reveal later.
7pm: Before I leave I use the Dustbuster to capture dust bunnies. I don’t think I have compulsive behaviors, in general, but this one classifies.
8pm: As I walk out the door, I spy a money cat by one of the sewing machines. I ask Traci if we can have it removed - I’m also not superstitious but when I lived in Hong Kong, whenever anything bad happened, there was one of those money cats around. Granted, that’s a bit like someone saying in NYC whenever anything bad happened there was a yellow taxi around…..but all the same….
I leave this at 8pm - as the beginning here started with the ending.
Off to another day…
Honesty is refreshing.
While you’re barreling through the next days, here’s two quotes from women to take with you:
The indomitable Maya Angelou said, “If you're always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be.”
And, author Samantha A. Hall, “You are allowed five emotional minutes a day. Then you gotta be a Gangsta.”
GO GET ‘EM, pal!
Amy always keeping it real!