Still Planning: The Concept Behind our Business

What is the concept behind our business?

Last year (summer of 2005) my teenage brother searched high and low for a pair of blue suede over-the-knee boots, only to find that they could only be found on the Internet from a shop in Europe. This was not the first event like this, nor would it be the last. His latest endeavor involves a pair of sequined pants and an Edwardian velvet frock coat… again, only to be found online, from the Website of a small shop in Europe, and at prices he cannot afford. He drew up a picture of what he wanted. I am now making the pattern and sewing it for him instead. I made his velvet cape a few years back, after a similar event. This is an ongoing thing, and sadly, my brother is not alone in his never-ending search for cloths made in a style he likes.

From November of 2006 through January 2007, I worked as holiday help at Macy’s department store. Every day of my job, teens and young adults, who sheepishly asked where I had bought my clothes, approached me. They than went on to tell the tale of how they had searched far and wide and could find no one who sold the clothes they wanted to wear (often this meant cloths like Johnny Depp wore in one of his movies). They than expressed their delight at finding me, because they knew that if someone locally was wearing that stuff, than somewhere around here there must be a store that sold it. Their delight was quickly turned to disappointment as I explained to them, no, there are no stores around here, I know, because I have looked and could not find one and so I made my cloths myself.

There is a story behind my clothes, and how I came to make them. It started in the 1970’s with a mom who was obsessed with the TV show, “Little House on the Prairie”; so obsessed that she, a seamstress, recreated the clothes from the show, and she and I wore them; everything, from the deep hooded sunbonnets, to the layers of petticoat on top of petticoat. In the 1980’s my mom found her love for country music and abandoned the Prairie dresses for jeans and cowboy hats, but by that time, I was a teenager who had never worn modern store bought cloths in my life, and though I tried, I was never able to get used to wearing pants. Thus began my search for the old fashioned clothes of Victorian times. In 1987, however, my style took a dramatic change. With my new found fandom for Poison guitarist C*C*DeVille, my clothes went from ginghams and calicos to sequins and spandex. By the 1990’s David Bowie and Alice Cooper add been added to my list of people to dress like, and thus came the darker more Gothic side of my dress style. Of course ever since I was a toddler, there was always my love for Vincent Price movies, and wearing the sumptuous gowns from his dark and creepy Medieval, Renaissance, and Edwardian sets. In more recent years has been added a following for Johnny Depp and his Gothic movies. The end result is, that today, I wear everything from top hats and frock coats to empire gowns with flowing trains and deep hooded velvet capes. Some say I am Gothic, others call me Lolita, a few say Punk, and most call it Fantasy CosPlay. Me? I say, I am just me, I wear what I like, but wearing what I like, has not been an easy task.

I was lucky. My mom was a seamstress of very fancy “Cinderella dresses” for little girls, which she sold in her store, Rainbow Crafts. I made my first doll at the age of six. I designed and made my first dress when I was 12 years old. It was a taffeta ball gown with ruffles and hand sewn fabric cabbage roses. At age 14 I enrolled in a four-year college course in Fashion Design and Merchandising. I graduated two years early at the age of 16. From that point on, I have been drawing, creating, and sewing everything I wear.

Today, fifteen years later (I am now 31), I still create my own cloths, and I still get asked everywhere I go, by everyone I meet… “Where can I buy one like yours?” It is with great pride that I can day, I made it myself, and yet, it is with great disappointment that I must also say, I made it myself, because there are no stores that sold what I was looking for. Had there been a store that sold one like it, I would have bought it instead of made it myself, but I could not find one, and that is the concept behind my business plan: To create a place where people can buy cloths like mine.

In addition the clothes, though, is the other equally difficult to find Gothic item: make-up and cosmetics. Make-up became my other passion. This is an area I know as well as cloths, for as soon as I turned 18, I got myself a job as a door-to-door salesman. I became the local Independent Avon Sales Representative. As a teenage, I grew up with a mom who sold Avon, and so there was never a short supply of make-up around the house. From the 1920’s through the 1960’s my grandmother had also sold Avon. We had a long running history with Avon, and so it was a logical step for me to take. I remained with Avon for 7 years. In 2002 Avon switched from door-to-door sales to online Internet sales, and by 2003, most Avon Representatives found themselves without a job. I was one of them. Make-up however, continues to be a wild thing with me.

In 1983 the world saw the rise of the punk rock movement become so big, that it inspired a cartoon TV series that in turn inspired those truly outrageous fashion dolls known simply as Jem Dolls. Mattel’s biggest Barbie Doll competitor ever, Jem went over big with the Punk and Gothic teens of the era, myself included. In the 1980’s I looked like a Jem Doll myself… big hair, wild clothes, and that bright color neon, trademark make-up that the Jem Dolls were so famous for… make-up, which it was very difficult to find unless you had access to a theater supply store. In October you could get the clown whites and the bright primary colors, so just before Halloween, each year, I did my stockpile buying of make-up. Today it is much easier to find… most cosmetics companies now make a white powder and black lipstick and blue nail polish, but still, you have to know where to shop, to find stores that actually carry these products.

With Gothic, Lolita, Punk, and CosPlay cloths and make-up go hand in hand. You really can’t have one without the other. And thus I come to the end of the concept behind the store. My business, my store, well be on the lines of a Macy’s meets Hot Topics, on a much smaller scale; in other words, a mini-specialty department store that caters to people like me: Gothic, Lolitas, Punks, and Fantasy CosPlayers.