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Foreign.
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I'm Laura Vinroot Poole and this is what we wore. Isabel Wilkinson Schor is the founder of Addersy and a journalist turned fashion industry entrepreneur. Isabel shares how a single conversation changed the course of her career and how she overcame imposter syndrome to become a remarkable designer and businesswoman. You grew up in Manhattan?
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I grew up in Manhattan and I still live in Manhattan and I've had, I had a brief stint in Los Angeles. I've never lived anywhere else other than.
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Well, it's, and it's funny because we've had over, I don't know, 150, 170 of these podcasts and we don't have that many native New Yorkers, which is kind of weird and interesting, I think.
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Actually I feel grateful that I landed back here, but it was important for me to live somewhere else. And I always say to native New Yorkers like, get out at some point if you think you're going to come back and experience another part of the world.
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And I have a 20 year old daughter and I do recognize that I need her to go away because I would love her to come back at some point. And it's so hard to push them out and want them to do that. But I'm like, intellectually I know that's true. So tell me, what was it like growing up in Manhattan?
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A
It was wonderful. I grew up downtown. My parents were in the arts. They started an art school called the New York Academy of Art. My dad would pick me up at Grace Church School and walk me down to the academy which was then on Astor Place, and I would do my homework there and I would often terrorize the live nude model classrooms where students were driving, were drawing from life. And I thought it was extremely funny as a middle schooler to run through the new portrait sittings.
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They started an art school together. Were they artists?
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My dad had worked at galleries and my mom had taught art history and architecture for many years. And they up with some other people, including Warhol, and formed the New York Academy of art in the 80s. And that was sort of the backdrop of my childhood. Downtown New York looked very different then than it does now. But it was a wonderful childhood and I'm an only child. I felt I was always raised at the adult table, so to speak. Yeah, and I'm, my parents are still very close to us today and we've, we've since moved. You know, it feels in many ways like I have a very tight nuclear family.
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What was your first recognition of fashion? I guess jile.
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It's such a good question. I look to my mom and her sister, my aunt Barbara, very much as kind of style icons of mine. And my, their mom, my grandmother Sylvia and her like bedecked little sister, Aunt Raj who was always like dripping and in like jazzy jewelry. Those are my earliest style memories, I would say. But my, and you know, as the only child as I grew up, my, my aunt also didn't have children. So I just got started to get hand me downs at a really young age. And um, you know, I'm very lucky to just kind of be wearing things that they wore throughout the years. My, my mom actually used to also sew a lot of clothes for me when I was little with these sewing kits. I forget the name of the sewing kit now, but she made every Halloween costume for me and then when I was really little sewed a lot of kind of toddler smocks and things for me. And so we're helping her with that. And so kind of fashion and style was always just sort of around and a present thing. And I never professionally learned to sew. It was an important part of the backdrop.
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How did you start to understand that this could be a career for you? Like what was your first indication that this could be a path that you could take? And I guess growing up in Manhattan, especially around New York Art League, you must have understood that artists, that could be a career for everybody.
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Yeah, I feel like I saw a multiplicity of creatives in different fields early on. And even if I wasn't fully aware that it was mapping a career trajectory for me at the time, I realize now looking back that it's sort of set a framework for who you could be.
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B
And so you started out in journalism?
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Yes, I graduated from college and went straight to journalism school.
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B
And what did you study in college?
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I studied art history. My college did not have a journalism program at the time, but there was a council on the humanities that it was called that visiting professors in journalism would visit and teach semester long courses and, and some of my favorite classes were taught by different journalists. Among them Scott Berg, the biographer and Evan Thomas, then the managing editor at Newsweek. And they became mentors of mine and helped me transition after college to the journalism world. I don't think I knew then that I wanted to work in the arts specifically. I wanted to be a more at least to start a general assignment reporter. And so while I was at Columbia, I got a internship at the Daily Beast, Tina Brown's then brand new news website. I was her number three. And I quickly Realized that being in that fast paced environment and being at like was. It was an all hands on deck kind of experience. And I realized that it was where I wanted to be. Even as an intern, I could get. If you were just physically in the office, things would get thrown to you. And I was like, oh my God, I can't really go back to class. I convinced Columbia to let me tack on another semester and basically go part time so that I could be at the Beast full time. And then right after I. Actually, it was before I had graduated, before the graduation ceremony, they had hired me full time and moved me to the west coast bureau. So Columbia mailed me my diploma. I didn't attend graduation.
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What were you writing about?
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Yeah, it was Tina's, you know, lifelong sensibility in that a blend of politics, books, celebrity culture. At the time, as an intern, you were kind of in this like, I would say war room meets general, like assignment desk. There was a thing called a cheat sheet, which was the backbone of the homepage, which was 10 news items a day. And I, for a while was the morning. You know, there was a rotating desk. So you'd wake up morning cheat sheet editor, I guess you could say. So you'd wake up at, I think it was 4am Well, I was gonna
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B
say in LA too. You must have gotten up early.
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By then it was, I was still in New York then. And you would, you would just be like, okay, here's the international news, here's the business news. And you would have to synthesize these ten little mini blurbs. It was a boot camp in journalism and, you know, stuff that I could never have learned in journalism school, I picked up there. I was very lucky because then Gabby Dolpelt had been hired as the west coast bureau chief and she was the one that was building out a team on the west coast. And she came and interviewed me. She likes to say I was in the tiniest miniskirt when she interviewed me. I don't remember which doesn't sound like me, it doesn't. But I was 23, so maybe I somehow got the job and the Beast moved me to la.
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And what was that like?
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I loved la. My aunt Barbara was there by then and her husband, my uncle Burt Fields, was an entertainment lawyer. And so they kind of took me under their wing and it was really wonderful to have family there. But I think I learned really early on that I didn't want to cover Hollywood and entertainment. And so I set out as the assistant editor, kind of supporting the west coast bureau. It was Gabby as its bureau chief, Kate Arthur, a wonderful editor, and Nicole Laporte, a very talented journalist. And I was the only person that had worked at the company before as an intern. I knew a little bit of the operations side and I kind of plugged in as this assistant editor and I, they, they said it was a three month gig and I stayed for three and a half years. Wow. And I just learned the ropes from these three really talented women. We got really close. It felt like the tightest knit team. I think I learned then and then through my next few bosses what it feels like to be like, have a really good time at the office and have like humor be the backbone of your office culture and people be really good friends. And it was such an informative experience for me of what a workplace can feel like.
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And so from there, three and a half years there, where'd you go?
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I sort of began to specialize in fashion and art coverage when I was there because they were so covered in Hollywood and I, you know, and then the, the art world, at least in LA was relatively nascent, was like the heyday of Band of Outsiders and all these interesting brands and artists there. And I covered mocha and all these things like that. And you know, I, so I specialized and became the fashion and art editor at the Daily Beast. And then the site merged with Newsweek magazine and they asked me to edit the art and fashion pages in Newsweek simultaneous to the, the more daily web content. So working on, you know, weekly pages and the, you know, daily editorial on the website as well. And it was, it was great fun. I had no experience and no business being a market editor or a fashion art editor for Newsweek at such a young age. But it was just, it felt like it was, it was an incredible opportunity. And I got, I realized though that I wanted to do this professionally. There were not a lot of other jobs in LA in fashion and art unless you went to work for the LA Times or something. So I kind of self transferred back home to New York. By then I had met my husband and brought him with me and we moved back in temporarily with my parents on 19th Street. And then I went to work back at the east coast office at the mothership of the Daily Beast. And then six months later I went to go work for Stella Bugby the Cut.
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Oh, wow. Wait, before. Can I ask you a shallow question before that? How did your style change from your whole life in New York and then moving to la? And then when you came back again to New York, did you notice a difference in how you dressed or what you needed that you couldn't find or what you missed?
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That's a great question. I always felt like I was not casual enough for la, but I remember struggling, and I also remember struggling, and this is a backbone of truly all of my jobs that I couldn't figure out how to dress for work, for the person I was at work, the person I was after work, and the person I was on the weekend. Like, three different people, and they're like, they didn't share a wardrobe.
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Right. And closets in New York are small.
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Yeah, exactly.
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That's an amazing person to work with. Stella, how long were you there and what'd you learn?
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You know, I got so lucky with these. This, like, string of inspiring female bosses. Stella, also. And the cut was a. Another example of an incredible workplace culture where I just had such a good time during the day, you know, there it was, like, just the funniest all the time. And the sensibility was amazing. And we. So, we had great fun. And so I was a. I started as an editor kind of taking all of the fashion and beauty stories, and then we were publishing probably 30 to 40 news pieces a day, and then there would be longer features that we'd work on. And, you know, again, it felt just like being thrown things and learning from her and learning from another wonderful editor, Molly Fisher, who became a close friend, as well as the wonderful writers on the team, Allison Davis among them. And I really admire her work as well. And so it just felt like this team of interesting, smart women. But yet I also felt, you know, perennially, like I didn't really know how to dress in a way that was comfortable for the office, that could also serve me who I was afterwards. I didn't feel that I wanted to be corporate. You know, I didn't want to dress in a way that was overly, I don't know, like I was going to a corporate environment at all. And yet I. I wanted to feel polished. I, you know, I didn't want to wear and couldn't wear designer clothes. It was like, how can I. How. What. What am I supposed to wear? I thought about it every day, and I'd say, like, such a moment of agita almost every morning, getting dressed.
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So while you were there, I mean, do people talk about their clothes, their own clothes, other than what you're writing about in an environment like that, honey,
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I don't have too many memories being there of, like, what we were wearing so much more. Just, like, getting really excited about emerging brands in New York and or elsewhere and, and being really plugged in with fashion news. And in that way, it felt like I felt like if I had a journalism education or background of the Beast, I obviously built that up at the Cut as well. But I also got a real fashion education there. And, you know, the, the sheer volume of stories that we published just meant you had to be all over the beat in a way that I hadn't been before. So I, I feel like I got fully a full education in the industry.
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And how long were you there?
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Almost three years, I believe.
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B
Okay.
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And then from there, then I went to T magazine. I was hired by Deborah Needleman. Awesome. To join the digital team AT T.
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B
Deborah, AT T. That must have been a completely different. I mean, she has a totally different perspective, I guess.
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Yeah, it was a slower paced environment that was more features forward and less news. Responsive. And obviously being within the New York Times and suddenly in a place with other sections and other desks and being the features magazine within the paper, you know, there were just all sort of different rules of the road. And it was really, it was another really like, fascinating time of how just learning the operations inside a different magazine and being on the digital side, I helped this small team, you know, figure out its, its web presence and, you know, how the, the, the digital publication differed from the magazine, et cetera. And then I stayed, I stayed at T for five years.
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What was the biggest skill that you learned there?
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I feel that I focused on a different side of the fashion world. AT T, it was a little less newsy and I, I. There were different creators and makers and artists that were kind of the T sensibility. And I feel like it was kind of an education in a different set of creative talent. And it was, it felt very global, which was, I was very grateful for. And so I grew to be the digital director under Hanya. You know, my focus was really finding writers and assigning writers in a range of cities on a, on different topics. So, you know, and starting franchises. I would say it would be like I started a newsletter called the T list there. That was what editors within the magazine and contributors were recommending in a range of fields. Deborah asked me to produce a virtual. Two virtual reality films actually at the height of VR. So that was an amazing experience. It was kind of just a wide range, you know, and then contributing to the magazine, working with, with styles was really wonderful as well. It was a, a pretty diverse range of, of roles within five years.
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B
So tell me about the birthday gift that changed the course of your career.
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My best Friend Danny hsieh. On my 33rd birthday, he gave me a session with a career coach and her name was Joanna Blore. She had a track record of working with C suite executives and you know, these very high level individuals. And I'm surprised that she took my call because I was, you know, lowly editor.
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When you got the gift, had you had a conversation with your friend and said, like, I'm just feeling, you know, stuck or like what was the impetus for that?
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Yeah, I was so happy at T and I love the people and I loved what I was doing. I, I was just more in a place of I don't know what the next 10 years looks like, I don't know what the next 20 years looks like. It was more just a moment of searching and wondering what was next.
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Did you have children at this point?
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I had a one year old daughter and I got on the phone with this woman and she said, what I want the one of the first questions, she said, how old are you? And I said I'm 33. And she said, okay, I want you to close your eyes and imagine yourself at 50. And I closed my eyes and I imagined my daughter being 18. For some reason I imagine myself looking out the window at her in a backyard of a non specific place. I had this very, very specific image in my mind and she like all this time had gone by, she was big. And Joanna said, what do you want to your life to look like at this moment? You have this 18 year old daughter. What are you, who are you professionally? And I said I will have started a business and written a book. And it just came out and I had no idea that it was in me. Maybe if not for the visualization I would have had a totally different answer that was more resume specific. She was like, oh wow, okay, that's the case. You need to get started because 17 years goes by in a flash and you have to lay the groundwork now and begin building the person in the career that you want to be at 50.
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And did you have any indication that you wanted the business to be a fashion business?
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Not specifically. She at that point said, I think you should take time off and figure out and just talk to people. And so that became my focus for the next six months was research and kind of reporting. It was what I already knew how to do and just talking to smart people and asking and I, I ended up talking to a lot of women about fashion and what they felt was missing from their wardrobes, but also their lifestyles more broadly, who they were Becoming how they transitioned between these different selves, between their work self, their personal. You know, it was. It felt like a. A degree in anthropology over six months. And it's something that I would never have allowed myself in my everyday, day to day putting out fires job. And it was during that six months that this idea began to form.
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B
And was your husband supportive in the process or your parents supportive?
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Absolutely. I think they were a little freaked out. I left without a specific, you know, after the career that I had had of always going to the next thing. You know, I think there was an expectation that I go work at another publication and. But they were very patient with me.
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B
So how did you begin to set up the infrastructure of this phantom business?
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It was a very, very simple idea at first. I wanted to make one shirt. In my mind, it was something that could be. It was a midweight fabric at a very specific thing. In my mind, it was a popover shirt that could be worn over a bathing suit. It was a kind of. And I thought it would be in herringbone and I thought it would be in cabana stripes, like bright, bright stripes and entirely unisex and something you could ball into your beach bag or wear to lunch over a wet bathing suit.
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B
And was it sort of a tunic or was it tuck in shorts?
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Almost a tunic over. Single button kind of fell open, no bib. And this was probably a mistake in hindsight, but I was convinced that it had to be unisex because. And I've since learned that unisex is a nightmare. But the. The idea was simple. And we. I found a wonderful partner who helped me then connect to fabrics and found basically the fabric that I wanted to be in and a wonderful mill who would help me develop it. And we went back and forth for months. And again, the idea was just to create one shirt. And I thought I was going to make 50 of them, give them to friends and see what they thought. And there was going to be no selling, there was going to be no name, there was going to be no business. And at the exact moment that we. That I found this wonderful fabric and wanted to make it in these five cabana striped colors, Covid happened and the mill shut and everything stopped.
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B
Were all of the choices, I guess, were you adamant about. Yes. No, this is right. This is not right. Like, did. Was it innate? Did you know it every single step along the way? Were you clear?
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I was surprised that yes, somehow I knew it was really about fabric at the beginning and it actually is still really about fabric today. And I knew early on that what I didn't want things to feel like, and I have since really honed that. But it was there at the beginning.
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B
You were designing yourself or did you have a partner in that?
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I had a technical designer who had experience in product development, the mill. So everything closed down for close to a year for quarantine. And in that year. Well, so we were. I was thinking that I would launch and launch, I mean, give 50 shirts away to friends in June of 2020 ended up being June of 2021, giving us an entire extra full year to develop. And in that year, I realized I wanted to add shorts and a caftan and a linen fringe dress and a sailor top and some kids stuff. And it just. It became a full brand and a full year, a full world, in a way. And, you know, I never. I don't think it would have happened like that had it not been for, you know, this quiet period.
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B
And also, don't you think having your voice as a writer maybe made you more confident about your point of view?
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I. It's funny, I've never thought of it like that. I think I. In a way, I feel like what I'm doing now is storytelling in a totally different medium and just not using words, but the story and the world is still there.
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B
So you had the challenge of the pandemic. What were the internal challenges that you faced as you started the business? Did you ever doubt yourself?
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Oh, all the time. Still do. No, I think. And this might be true of others who have performed a massive career switch or transition, but there was a lot of imposter syndrome, you know, just kind of coming online as a new. New designer and. And with an. With a company in a field that I had no professional experience in. And I think for that reason, I still don't really refer or see myself as a fashion designer. And it might be that there. That's part of the imposter syndrome speaking, because that's literally what I now do as a day job. I always kind of thought that, oh, this is a lifestyle brand. This is. We just happen to make clothes. Here's the world. And I think I was creating this full world so as not to just be straight, ready to wear. And I think in hindsight, though, that paid off because it actually speaks to my interest too. You know, I care a lot about music and food and design and women and meeting people, people, and it's. It's all part of the same brand. It's not just this. This super, I would say, pure focus on ready to wear. Although that is of course the backbone of what we do. It. It feels like a bigger world.
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B
You started to sell exclusively online and then you. This is during the pandemic, I would imagine still. Yes.
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Coming out of the pandemic. I think that was part of the nice timing was that it was a very travel minded capsule wardrobe. Right. As people were like get me out of here, get out of here.
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B
How did you see the clothes on people and how did you start to understand what was working and what wasn't working?
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So we launched online in June of 2021 and we had great press right at the beginning. But it.
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B
Which can be good and bad right. If you're not ready for it.
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A
Yeah, we were. Luckily we had the inventory and we were ready for it and it was very exciting. But it was also and we being direct, we kind of knew who our clients were right away. And I remember within the first two days we had people, oh my gosh, I'm going on a boat tomorrow. Can you messenger the fringe dress to me at my house? And I remember walking a fringe dress up to someone's house and they're like, I was like these people are going to call the police because they ordered something online that is being hand carried to them within 20 minutes. But you know, it was amazing to see right away this kind of response. But of course it really took time to take a step back and think about who our clients really were and what they needed and how they actually wanted to shop.
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B
Your first thought was I'm going to make these shirts for my 50 friends. And then it becomes your 50 friends have them. But then it grows and then you don't know that you know the circle outside of that and then you don't maybe really even know what they want. Also that first collection can be successful but then you've got to do a second collection.
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And Absolutely. And then I was like oh my God, we need to be. We're now six months behind.
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B
Exactly.
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A
Hadn't occurred to me to do a second collection. And you're absolutely right. I at the beginning I looked at Ottersea as this resort minded escapism inspired more travel aligned brand and we. It was a surprise to people when for the second collection for fall we launched cashmere and it was wrap coats and the same popover shape but in cashmere and drawstring pants and. But it was this. It spoke to set dressing in the same way that the striped collection had. It spoke to like ease of which is a very, very central value for me is like how I just want everything to kind of go together easily. You don't have to stress about what to wear. And I can talk more about that. But that was really, I think, born from my struggles getting dressed every morning was this philosophy around ease. And so the second collection, while the fabrics were totally different, had the exact same. These different tonal sets. There were like, you know, pop over and drawstring pants and wrap coat in camel color, in gray and in navy and in charcoal. And, and. And women just started buying these full sets and they were much more expensive. And I was. I was shocked by it.
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B
And so in a way, you had this idea at first, but the. It sounds like the idea sort of morphed as you went along and you realized that the. What you were solving was a different thing than what you thought you were doing.
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Absolutely. It felt responsive to what people were buying to some degree, but also what my evolving interests and evolving seasons and.
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B
And learnings. I mean, you were learning some. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [29:25]
A
And. And so by collection three, we introduced a sculpted vest. So this was our second summer season, which was the introduction of tailoring, you know. And so it was still an edited collection, but there were now tailored trousers and a sculpted vest, which in the same way were still the. Like the set dressing, but in a much more elevated way, because these two pieces went together beautifully and yet they were not in fabric and a prescriptive set, if that makes sense.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And it was then that we started seeing people really buy them together. They looked so flattering on a range of body types. People really responded to this silhouette. And then came the question, where can I try this on? I had rented a tiny little office space on the fourth floor of a building on 64th and Madison. The only reason I had rented it was because A, it was close to where I lived and B, because I had these different freelancers at that point and consultants who were all working separately. And I realized how fun. I really wanted to emulate the office cultures that I had been brought up on. And I wanted us all to be together. And in my mind, it was. It was also c, a great deal because of COVID and landlords things having changed, landlords having a really, really different attitude about office leases. And I signed this. It was the top floor. It is the top floor of this little townhouse building above a restaurant. And we started co working there. And then customers began to ask if they could try things on that they had seen online. And we have a warehouse in Bergen, New Jersey, and we were be to get use their Quite expensive messenger service to bring pieces in for people to try on in the studio and. Or the, The. It was then the office and it was a former fitness studio. And there were reps written on whiteboards, sliding doors. And so I used screens to block off the vantage point of customers when they would exit the elevator. And there would be a tiny little rack with the four things that we had called in from the warehouse. And there would be a screen leading you to the bathroom, which is how you would try things on. And we hoped you didn't see our desks or anything like that. And then we could check you out via invoice or whatever to your email. And so that began and it was very, very imperfect. But then what started happening was that it happened every two weeks and then every week and then multiple times a week. And we realized then and there this needs to close and become a real retail space.
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B
Wow. So what was a moment in those early days when you knew that you were on the right path? Was it that when you realized people were coming every day and that things were fitting and people were loving things?
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A
Well, it felt real when the first person that was not a family member, and I think my mom was our first order online, but it felt I. I was really obsessed with, like, overhearing what women were saying and wanting to work with clients myself and the. And I still feel that way and it just always feels exciting with every client and every purchase. And I don't know when that will wear off, but it hasn't yet.
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B
I'm almost 30 years in. It hasn't worn off on me.
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A
Inspiring to hear. So I, I guess in that sense that was when it felt real, when people started coming in who I didn't know.
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B
What's been the most difficult part about learning a new industry mid career?
- [33:21]
A
I think there's just a massive amount of technical knowledge that I feel again, like I'm in boot camp of. I feel like I'm in sophomore year of college. And, you know, I am in awe of. Of many of my colleagues with, you know, who have gone to. To school and have, you know, such incredible technical skills. I think part of, you know, part of it too is the. To speak to the, the bravery thing. I think I, in a way, I feel like I, because I was a new arrival in the industry. I didn't really know how things work and in a way it just allowed my night. My naivete allowed for me to do things a little differently. And it was really just because I didn't know how things were done. And for that reason it was just, okay, we're going to focus on product and we're going to focus on getting it to the customer. And it was like, this is just the easiest, not easiest, but kind of most straightforward thing. And we're going to produce collections up until the point when they're for sale. And then at some point last minute, we're going to try to shoot them and then we're going to release them for sale. So it made the timeline very, very crunched and very last minute. And now, of course, we've spent several years, I would say, adapting to the real ecosystem of the business and we're now on the wholesale calendar and working several seasons in advance and a bit more organized. But those early days were certainly a challenge.
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B
What would you share with somebody who's starting out on a new career journey and might be experiencing imposter syndrome?
- [35:14]
A
You know, I would say that the hardest part for me was starting and the mentally it's always this question of what's the first step. And I feel like I talk to a lot of people who have great ideas for businesses or books they want to write and they can't really get it off the ground because they're, they don't know the entry point and they don't know how to start. And I feel that there is never a perfect place to start. It's just often talking to people, putting one tiny foot for in front of the other. I remember a friend who was became editor in chief of a magazine, this is several years ago, called me and said, God, it's not perfect. I don't know what to do. And I just remember saying, you've just ripped the band aid. You know, it's going to be so far from perfect for so long. But the pro. The thing is you probably won't have a ton of customers or a ton of readers or whatever right at the beginning. You will have to build it over years with your clients or your readers or whatever. And as you're building it and responding to that feedback, you'll get more, more and more perfect or whatever, or closer to the quality that you desire. But at the beginning, you know, it's, it's letting good be the enemy of great or whatever the phrases. But I had a friend who also gave me really great advice early on. My friend Kyle. I was hand wringing about what my next step would be after I had left the journalism world and I was figuring out what the brand would be and, and he said, Isabel, remember, nobody cares. And it is to this day, one of the best pieces of advice I've ever received. Because it's so easy in your own head to be like, oh, my God, people are watching. Everyone's, like, wondering what my next move is gonna be. And the reality is no one is waking up in the morning and eggs and being like, is Isabel Wilkinson starting a business today? No one has ever said that in the history of the world. No one cares. And so if you can just wake up in your day and do the thing between the. In your waking hours that you're really excited about. And for me, it was sourcing great fabric and focusing on making great things that I wanted to wear and that I. My friends, wanted to wear. And that's still how it feels to me. It's like, if. And that's just what gets me excited. And in a way, the beginning, and people are, like, floored that. I didn't have any kind of master plan when I started out. And it was. It really just felt so personal. It was like, what are the. What are the things that I want to make? And if I put my head down. And Covid was certainly, I would say, a cloak in many ways, of. For people who were putting their head down and wanted to create something privately. And it was this open time and this cloak of anonymity, in a way. And I said, if I wanted to just put my head down and make the things that I want to make and that makes me happy and feel fulfilled in my waking hours, you know, then that's enough. And I think that that, to me, is the advice that I impart on our people who are starting a new venture, because you just have to be really excited. And I know it's such a cliche, but what gets you out of bed in the morning?
- [38:53]
B
And I think there's something also that I tell entrepreneurs a lot. You have to be a little bit careful who you share your plans with, even the people you love the most, that. That love you the most, because I think that they can be afraid of your failure. They don't want you to get hurt. Every time I talk to my mom about starting the store, my mom would be like, I don't think it could work. You know, like, all. There's every reason why it couldn't work. And it's not because she didn't believe in me. It's because she didn't want me to get hurt. And so you have to. For me, I feel like you have to be a little bit careful about how many people you share it with. Almost.
- [39:26]
A
Absolutely.
- [39:27]
B
What have you learned about yourself in the last five years that you didn't know?
- [39:31]
A
For me, it's that I. You know, I think there was a lot of. Part of the imposter syndrome was, I don't know how to do this. What are you doing? Why are you doing this? You don't know what you're doing. And overriding that voice and just realizing you actually really do know the difference between. It's not. It's not right or wrong. That's the question. It's what's right to you. And the. I think the closer you can feel to that voice every day, whether you're talking to a colleague in an HR capacity or picking fabrics or talking to a client and helping them style themselves. It just. You know, I would get very nervous at the beginning with. When, you know, as much as I love talking to clients, I. I would get very nervous when they would ask me for what styling and direct styling advice on what to buy, because I'm not very salesy, and I don't. You know, I would be like, oh, I don't know, talk to someone else. Like, I can't. I can't help you.
- [40:45]
B
Like, I mean, I kind of do that, too, because I'm like, I'm not even really that into fashion. I'm actually just into solving problems.
- [40:51]
A
Totally. And I would. Yeah. And I would. I would get quite nervous, and then I would say, y. No, you know what? Like, you actually do kind of know what you think is right, and you're just being nervous about not wanting to seem a certain way or. And I would, you know, and so I. Once you kind of override those doubts, I think, when I think you get closer to your. Your truest self, in a way.
- [41:18]
B
What did you wear to prom?
- [41:20]
A
Oh, God. I wore a dress that was far too sexy for prom. I will find a picture. It was a green. Bright. Bright green.
- [41:37]
B
Like, Kelly green.
- [41:38]
A
Kelly green.
- [41:40]
B
That's really bold.
- [41:41]
A
I love that Kelly green with these little diamond straps and backless. And not diamond strap, whatever. Rhinestone straps and diamante. Diamante. And a smokey eye and a.
- [41:57]
B
Was it long?
- [42:00]
A
It was a long dress. I can definitely find a photo fabric. And it was a kind of chiffon, of course. And was it vintage or new? It was new. I'm trying to remember where I purchased it, and I don't remember, but I think that was the last time I've ever worn that bright a color.
- [42:20]
B
Thank you, Isabelle, so much. I love talking to you.
- [42:23]
A
Thank you so much. For having me. This was such a great conversation and I'd love to chat more when I see you.
- [42:31]
B
What We Wore is produced by Capitol and Balto Creative Media. The Original the original song, Someone so Enchanting, was composed and performed by Britt Drazda. Please follow us on Instagram at hatweworepodcast for additional content and show updates. Queencitypodcastnetwork.com.