Hey peeps
I just touched down in Melbourne and decided to blog... :)
Strange as it might sound, airports and aeroplanes are where I do most of my designing. There's nothing like being cramped up in a small seat next to a large sweaty man to get those creative juices flowing. Although, I usually get a few funny looks for drawing lots of pictures of long skinny ladies. I wonder if the air hostesses think I'm a creep drawing pictures of them.
1. WHO IS SOPHIA JAMES?
I am. :) For those of you who don't know, Sophia James is a new label that I have been working on for the last few months. I intended to release the first few pieces in July... but it was around that time that Black Milk went, y'know, totally insane and I decided that the responsible thing to do was get all hands on deck making sure Black Milk was in a good place, and poor Sophia James got shelved. It was a little bit heart breaking - we had put a lot of time and effort into the first collection and I had to tell the guys working on it that we had to stop work on the label and focus on Black Milk.
However, I am happy to report that we are back into it and we have produced over 1000 Sophia James garments so far!
You might not be impressed by 1000 garments, however, these are deisgner garments that are a lot more challenging for us to make, so I'm pretty proud of what we have achieved so far.
I really shouldn't start talking about them yet, but I have to say that I think the first Sophia James leggings are pretty much the most awesome leggings of the year. I can't wait to show you guys!!! They're called Tiered Leggings, and they are inspired by Babylonian Ziggaruts. :) There is also a Tiered Skirt and a Tiered Dress - which are almost as awesome as the leggings. ;)
Now, a lot of girls are really excited about the Sophia James release and are telling me that they plan on getting ALL THE THINGS!!!! However, the bad news is, that because we classify these as a high end designer product, they're not priced for volume sales... soooooo not cheap. In other words - we can't sell them at a competitive price and look to moving large numbers to make the label profitable. For the simple reason that the pieces are very time consuming and we just can't make them at the same speed as BM pieces.
But I don't think that is a bad thing... my original vision for Sophia James was that it would produce garments that girls would treasure. So you save up, get that dream piece, and ... keep if for the rest of your life (maybe hand it down to your daughters, making them swear the HLB oath before taking the garment).
The big questions now is.... when do we release the new pieces?! Decisions... :)
2. This might be a good opportunity for me to talk about a few things that have been on my heart to those out there who are involved in all the varied Black Milk communities around the world.
The person who is in charge of looking over all the BM Facebook pages is Handsome Cam. I am personally banned form all the pages, it's a self imposed ban, but I suspect most girls prefer it that way. Cam does a great job, however, there are some mornings when he comes in to BMHQ looking like he's just been digested by a crocodile i.e. not very well. And it is at this point we will have a conversation that goes a litte something like this:
Me: Hey Cam, how's it going?
Cam: Yeah.... not so good.
Me: Ooookay, what's up?
Cam: Dramas... so many dramas.
Me: Really? Do tell...
Cam: You don't want to know. I was up till 3am dealing with some stuff...
Me: I do want to know!
Cam: Some of those girls... they just... just....
Me: Cam, you're changing colour - you're actually starting to turn purple. Relax man, have this small glass of gin to steady your nerves.
(Cam grabs the bottle, skulls the entire contents before collapsing on the floor, hugging his legs, sucking his thumb, shaking uncontrollably and repeating "Save me ... the girls....the girls!!!!")
It is at this point I know that something has gone down on one of the BM pages and poor Cam is going to be severely traumatised for the rest of the week.
So you get a quarter of a million red blooded females together... and you get yourself a few dramas. WHO KNEW!!!!???
I LOVE all you guys so much. I really do. It means the world to me that you connect with what I do and that you love what I have worked so hard at for so many years. This community is the BEST THING EVER!!! And we are doing something here that has never been done before. I just feel bad sometimes when I know that so often within our groups there are girls who get hurt feelings, or feel insecure, or just generally have something not cool happen to them. It happens from time to time. Obviously 99% of the time there is nothing but AWESOMENESS ... but sometimes bad things happen too. :/
So I apologise on behalf of all sharkies everywhere to anyone who has had a less than awesome experience with us. I'm sorry if someone didn't treat you right, or said something insensitive, or just behaved in a not cool manner that bought you down, or made you shed a tear.
Keep smiling little sharkie, keep playing dress ups, keep loving your legs, and please know that even if you have a bad experience along the way... at least one person massively appreciates your involvement with Black Milk.
And that's me. :)
x
jL
