1. Well, it's the day before our Spetember collection gets released - Sick Puppies. It's always a bit surreal for me at this time, counting down the hours. I feel like a boxer who is about to go into the ring. It's a pretty good feeling, especially since I won't get brain damage.
Sick Puppies has a lots of different pieces in it, from quirky halloween pieces to old favourites that are returning. I think there's a little bit of everything for everyone.
It is dominated by prints, which is cool because peeps love the prints, but I think that in the future I'll try to get a lot more designer pieces in. :)
2. Speaking of designer pieces.... I have been working on Sophia James lately. As you may recall, Sophia James is a new fashion label that we are launching this year. It will be full of high end designer pieces that we have been working on for quite a while. I feel really excited about it. I have showed quite a few of the pieces to Black Milk girls and they have responded really well (y'know, drooling and stuff). The great news is that a lot of those pieces have been manufactured and are ready for styling little bosses to buy! So look out for our first mini launch of Sophia James soon .... :)
3. A few people have asked me about our current release schedule. Stuff along the lines of "JL Y U RELEASE SO MUCH CLOTHES - WE NO HAS MONIES!!!"
A good question I suppose (despite the spelling and caps lock) so let me see if I can give you a decent answer.
The simple answer is because we have a LOT of people at Black Milk who every day are involved with designing, creating, sampling, cutting, snipping, tagging, manufacturing, selling, and packing our sweet stretchy clothes - and we want to stay busy!
In an ideal world, we would slow down and get into a nice groove - make some clothes, make some money, and chillout with a pina colada and a cigar in the evening at my beach house playing the ukelele around an open fire and drifting off to sleep while staring at the stars.
But... this is fashion, darling, and that's not how it works.
Between June and July Black Milk didn't grow at all, between July and August we grew by 42%! That's challenging to manage! So we just keep on making clothes, hoping that peeps will buy them. And every so often I look at the stock room, FREAK OUT LIKE A SQUIRREL ON CRACK and then decide to release a new collection.
It might sound unprofessional but it works surprisingly well.
2. I'm still working on my gymwear collection, which I'm really excited about. I have been snooping around the gym lately checking out what girls have been wearing, and it's... less than earth shattering. Not that I think you necessarily need to shake up the fashion establishment while sweating and grunting in a room full of other sweaty, grunting women. It's just that ... I rememeber the 80s. In those days you could rock out in a fluoro thong back leotard wihy leg warmers... and that was just normal.
What happened?
Come back 1985, all is forgiven!
4. I have been working on some studded leggings over the last few days. I tried this ages ago, right about when the studded trend was really in full swing and no self respecting fashion blogger could be seen without their studded shorts/shoes/clutch. But I failed. I used some glue on ones that you were meant to iron on. Needless to say, they fell off within... well, when you put them on.
But, I've had another swing, and I actually think I can make it work. It's difficult to get studs into stretch fabrics. The reason is, of course, that the holes you have to put in the fabric to get the studs in also stretch. And that means they get bigger. And when the hole gets bigger, the stud that fit, doesn't fit any more.
Now, I haven't eliminated the stretch hole problem entirely - but they still look cool, even with the holes visible. They look punk. And if you plan on wearing studded leggings, I'm guessing you're okay with going a little bit punk.
:)
x
jL
