ABOUT DREAMS
It’s funny watching your dreams come true right before your eyes.
Fairy tales taught us that dreams come true in one big, magical moment. The glass slipper fits. The spell works. The castle appears. Suddenly, you’ve arrived.
Reality, of course, has a slightly different sense of humor.
Dreams don’t usually happen overnight. They happen slowly, quietly, and sometimes so gradually that you don’t even realize you’re living inside something you once only imagined.
Recently, I put one of my designs into production for a run of 100 pieces.
One hundred.
For some companies, that might not sound like much. For me, it’s the largest production run I’ve ever done and the biggest investment I’ve ever made in one of my designs.
And I am ridiculously proud of it.
It started the way so many things do: with an idea. Then a sketch. Then measurements, fabrics, details, changes, conversations, decisions, and probably a few moments of wondering what the hell I was doing.
Then the sample arrived.
There is something incredibly surreal about holding a garment in your hands that once existed only in your imagination. I got to put it on, feel it, examine the construction, and see something that started as an idea become real.
And tonight, we photographed that very same sample.
Watching a model step in front of the camera wearing my design was another one of those moments.
There it was.
Not a sketch.
Not a concept.
Not a someday.
A real piece of clothing.
And soon there will be one hundred of them.
I think we spend so much time imagining that “making it” will feel like one enormous moment. Maybe your brand suddenly becomes famous. Maybe everyone knows your name. Maybe you hit some magical sales number and confetti falls from the ceiling while someone hands you a giant novelty check.
But maybe that isn’t actually the dream coming true.
Maybe this is.
Maybe it’s all the little moments along the way.
It’s drawing the first sketch.
Seeing the first sample sewn together.
Trying it on for the first time.
Watching someone model your design during a photoshoot.
Signing off on production.
And realizing that somewhere, a factory is about to make one hundred pieces of something that once existed only inside your head.
That’s pretty damn magical.
Of course, through all of this emotional reflection, there is still one extremely important thought running through my mind:
Everybody is going to want this because it has pockets.
Priorities.
I’m still building. I’m still learning. There are much bigger goals ahead of me, and there are plenty of things I haven’t accomplished yet.
But I’m starting to realize that success might not be a destination you suddenly reach.
Maybe it’s something you notice happening around you.
So while I’m still waiting to “arrive,” I think, in some ways, I already have.
Angel