From 2019 – 2020:
As you can see this collection has taken us into the beauty world with a few years of research and development under our belt.
This was our first collaboration with a major industry leader in the beauty sector as well as with a community college’s Fashion Program, specifically students/faculty within the program participating in the production of our show.
The entire show concept came from me attending this same beauty show a year in advance and finding myself speaking with the show producer – asking them, how can we make room for independent beauty brands who don’t wanna order a million pieces of anything yet we just want a small production run in order to get our products to market…
From there the show manager and I put together a panel discussion event and we invited other independent beauty brands to join the panel as we discussed with attendees of the show ways to break into the beauty industry at our independent levels.
The goal of the panel discussion was to highlight key areas within the industry that would work with us in producing our beauty brands in as many flavors as we can in order to get to market as soon as possible with a spread that will allow us to compete.
Also, since this beauty show was taking place during NYFW – I offered up presenting my new spring collection at the beauty show – and the group agreed, then off we went.
Once we realized the scale of the event, we knew we needed support so it was only natural to reach out to the local community college; where I was a former student. It made all the sense in the world to see if their fashion department would be interested in participating in our show.
Everyone said yes and from there we went to work on producing a very amazing experience for all. Funny enough, the guest of the beauty show did not know that there was gonna be a live fashion show so they were also caught off guard but very, very impressed….it was so cute to see them take out their phones and record everything lol. Really take my hat off to all that participated in the production – I’m rooting for you all!
I would truly be remiss to not mention the technology that we used for this production, which was solely focused around our mobile App. By this time we were a few years into having our own app as an independent source for online shopping as well as viewing my body of work. The exciting part I must add, was being able to send our app users our beauty show invitation request through the app. This was not only a cost savings from a production standpoint, but another engagement tool that we were able to leverage in real time.
Our app journey has been absolutely amazing. It was a courageous challenge for me to learn UI /UX design and then work with engineers in order to apply my designs directly into our ecosystem. Today our app platform is being prepared for the future where our clients can engage with us directly plus experience our products and services at their fingertips…. more to come here!
Another beautiful avenue I had the exciting pleasure to travel down at that time, was the exploration of our gourmet food products!
From mustards, jams to coffee and teas – there was nothing I could not make our own. This was another very important step to take believe it or not because as a brand, we have to host events in order to engage our clients. As you know, part of hosting great events is having the best food and beverage service on all levels. As a creator, I understand the need to curate these events in order to ensure we have the worlds best offerings on the table.
As the world headed into the most tumultuous year of my lifetime, my new “Estate Collection of Designer Foods” line had to be reimagined. And it was just that, reimagined. It’s funny how an idea that started off for something strictly onsite (during particular events) now turned into something that could be made available virtually to people everywhere. What a world we live in!
Today we are exploring release dates for our exciting gourmet food line. Also, I would like for you to note, I’m a great cook by the way therefore you will want to taste what we have cooking around here!!!
Dex
– Complete credits pending