I think I'd heard mumblings about asos once in a while in my monkeysphere, but assuming it was a US-only and mainstream-size-only website, I didn't check it out. I could not have been more wrong! Thanks to one of Plus Model Magazine's Fashion Friday posts, I saw an awesome dress on a woman in my size, and followed the click-through just out of curiosity. Said dress no longer seems to be available, but wouldn't you know, asos also has a German site with free shipping and free returns inside Germany! Color me thrilled! Not only that, the clothes are totally cute, way more exciting than anything I've seen on my usual German go-to sites, Happy Size and Ulla Popken! There were a number of pieces I loved, but which were unfortunately polyester, which I detest, but there are also a number of pieces which I immediately put into my shopping cart. I will, however, be saving said shopping cart until after my Paris trip.
Happy Size and Ulla Popken, I might add, are my go-to sites because there's not much else to choose from in Germany (and sadly, the situation is better here than it was in Denmark!). In all truth, though, I find the former to be mostly boring, and the latter ranging from mostly boring to occasionally godawful ugly (to say nothing of how their sizing charts lied to me, but that's a rant for another day). Would that there were fantastic new designers like Domino Dollhouse popping up on the German scene (I also intend to throw together a cart for purchasing in about May or so, as I'll be stateside in June)! I will keep my eyes peeled for them!
On Thursday, I will be travelling by fast train to Paris! I have three custom Google maps prepared for the trip: one with plus-size stores; one with secondhand, thrift, vintage, and consignment stores; and one catch-all with yarn stores, fabric stores, and a confisserie that I simply must visit. After printing them out, I even used color-matched markers to sketch in the Metro lines as best I could. I also plan to go back and number the tags and the list, as Google Maps didn't seem to have an option for this (note to self: have the guys submit this idea to the Google Maps development team). Naturally I won't be able to hit them all, but there are a number of places where several shops from each map are clustered: Rue de Rivoli, Boulevard Haussmann, and a few others.
Also, Christian's darling little sister Ulrike bought us a Moleskine City Notebook for Paris and filled it with must-sees and must-dos, recalled from the summers she lived there while working at EuroDisney. I had no idea Moleskine actually made such a thing! I'll definitely have to get one for the NYC trip! And possibly one for Chicago, and one for Copenhagen, and one for Berlin, and and and... ok, let's just stop there. Ooh, one for Munich! I should fill in one of these for handing off to guests when we get out-of-country visitors. Oops, didn't stop. But really, these are too awesome!
On the workshop front: together with the guys and Lars's mentee Bartosz, we packed up my workshop space and brought most everything back, save for the IKEA furniture which will need disassembling, and a couple other pieces of furniture that didn't fit. Most everything is now in my new garage space, save for the things I'm putting in my room, like my yarn, my knitting books, and my comfy chair. The garage is definitely a short-term solution, not a long-term one; the floor is warped from housing a car, it smells musty in ways that make me a little worried about my fabric, and the lighting is terrible (thankfully it's about time to stop using my light therapy box for the year, so I have a portable bright light unit I can put down there. And given how rarely the guys and I game at home, I think they can resign themselves to temporarily losing the gaming table to my work.
On the work front: I need to make a splash graphic, and pick out a CSS template for Lars to apply, as well as help him design the data structure to house the survey responses, but it mightn't be too long before we're ready to go live with the body type survey!
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
How did I miss this??
Full-Figured Fashion Week is in New York in June, the week AFTER I'm going there.
Hmmm... can I rearrange my plane ticket? I'd so love to go!
Hmmm... can I rearrange my plane ticket? I'd so love to go!
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Opinionated FAT-shionista: This site makes me happy!
I'm starting a new category to list the sites and retailers I either love, hate, or feel decidedly "meh" about. I simply had to start this planned type of entry today, as I've just found an American plus-size retailer I actually LOVE and which has several items which inspire feelings of "IT MUST BE MINE!"
The retailer is none other than Domino Dollhouse, created by plus-size fashion blogger Tracy Broxterman. Hey, blog to designer to store, sounds like a path I want to go on!
Check out some of these pieces of awesomeness that I so, so want:
The Lipsticky Skirt in Red:
The Royal Icing Coat:
The Domino Dahlia Pencil Dress:
The retailer is none other than Domino Dollhouse, created by plus-size fashion blogger Tracy Broxterman. Hey, blog to designer to store, sounds like a path I want to go on!
Check out some of these pieces of awesomeness that I so, so want:
The Lipsticky Skirt in Red:
The Dancing Dame Dress:
Considering how rare it is for a plus-size site to make me sit up and go ZOMG!, I will definitely have to budget some money for a Domino Dollhouse purchase in the near future!
Monday, February 20, 2012
Adventures of an Accidental Fat-shion Designer: My four-footed anti-assistant and other news
It would not be exaggerating to say that I've been a bad, bad blogger. It's been over two months since my last post! Two months! Good grief, woman! I can blame at least part of it on holiday craziness, as my last post was December 16. But since then? I can blame it on an adorable little four-footed critter named Frida. Lemme 'splain.
See, I am A Dog Person(TM). I love just about anything with four feet and fur, but dogs hold a special place in my heart like nothing else. I had a wonderful dog from somewhere around age six until we had to put her to sleep when I was 18 due to congestive heart failure, after which I cried harder and longer than I ever have in my life, before or since. Since then, there has been a dog-shaped hole in my heart which periodic encounters with other people's dogs could only make more poignant. I've been meaning to get a dog for years now, but the time and circumstances never seemed right.
Early this year, all that changed when I adopted a rescued Bodeguero from Mallorca, who'd been given a new lease on life by a German dog rescue called Beschützer Instinkte ("protective instinct"). Apparently when Germans go to the Mediterranean or Eastern Europe on vacation, they abscond with homeless and mistreated dogs, to which I say "Go Germans!". She had been brought back to Germany by a delightful young woman named Sarah who'd gotten her own dog there five years ago, and who's successfully fostered a couple dogs since then. Sarah named her Frida for Frida Kahlo (Spanish, Mexican, close enough, right? :P), and then advertised her on Quoka.de, which seems to be the local equivalent of Craigslist.
Frida is a delightful dog, despite clearly having had a rough patch in life. She's an absolute charmer, to the extent that she's won over the two avowed Cat People she lives with besides me (though at 5 kg / 11 lbs., I've known and owned several cats larger than she is!). Christian adores playing and snuggling with her, and Lars is having a blast teaching her commands. She's super-smart, amazingly snuggly, and having had food security issues in her past, very easy to motivate with treats. Her only major downside, now that we've got the housebreaking issues mostly sorted out, is that she has a hardcore case of separation anxiety, and I am her Mommy-Security-Blanket-Person like WHOA. Add that to the fact that big city noises and experiences like public transit are very new and scary for her, and I've been seriously housebound in the last month and a half. Hence calling Frida my "anti-assistant". Gratuitous cute pictures of me with dog can be found here.
She's gradually getting better, but it's slow going. I passed off my ticket to go see Pirates of the Caribbean live at the Gasteig again tonight, since she's not ready to spend three hours without me even with a dog sitter. I cancelled plans to go to Berlin with Christian this weekend since no way in hell she's ready to be separated from me for a weekend. The only reason I'm not in a panic about our plans for Paris at the end of March is that Sarah has kindly agreed to dog-sit Frida then, and hopefully I'll get her to do so again in June when we go to New York.
Yup, you read that right: Paris and New York! Oh my goodness gracious, people! I've been through both cities just to travel via the airports (actually on the same trip, now that I think about it), but I've never actually been IN either city! I'm totally stoked! Where do I go plus-size shopping, folks?? Clue me in!
On the business front, things have been slow going even for reasons other than Frida. Thanks to my having SAD (or "winter depression" as it's so aptly called in all the other Germanic languages), this is my lethargic, low-energy time of the year. While it's SO much better here than it was in Denmark, it's still been like pulling teeth to make myself get stuff done. Also, I will confess, I'm a bit of a video game addict. While many of my friends have been playing Skyrim, which would be like heroin for me, I've been making do with my methadone version by playing the deluxe version of Oblivion, the previous title in the Elder Scrolls series. And I really have to say, playing any video game while using the projector to create a two-meter "monitor screen" on the south wall of our living room KICKS EVER-LOVING ASS! Ahem. That said, I haven't been spending all of my time gaming, which makes Lars very proud of me.
There's also been a major hiccup on the workshop front. Ingrid, the woman I rent from, had a small stroke or aneurysm in her brain shortly after I started renting from her, and it has left her with a jag in her visual field that's made it impossible to continue making jewelry, the poor love. With a heavy heart, she's decided to close her studio and not renew her lease on her workshop, which means I'm out of a space as of March 31st. In truth, though, it was too far away to be practical, so this is really a blessing in disguise. I'm sincerely considering a space in Kultfabrik, which is close enough to be a single bus ride and roughly 7 minute walk away (or upwards of 15 minutes in deep snow with a recalcitrant dog, but I digress), and easy biking distance once the weather clears up. The one major downside is that it's too big and expensive for my current needs, so I'll have to find a subletter for part of it, but that's not looking too impossible.
I've been working with my fantastic graphic designer on spiffy graphics for the web version of my body type survey, so hopefully the site can go live in a month or so. I'm really looking forward to having data to look at. Data is so much fun! Sue and I are working on a customizable plus-size knee sock knitting pattern, and I've been having a blast collecting and looking at the data just for feet, ankles, calves, and knees, so I can't wait to start working with whole bodies!
I've also been working on making some plus-size croquis drawings to design over. For those not familiar with the term, a croquis (or "crokey" as it's often written online by design students who've only heard it said and never seen it spelled) is a line drawing of a body that you can use as a two-dimensional mannequin to design garments on. Plus size versions are virtually unknown. Therefore, I've been gathering pictures of diverse fat bodies, from nude or nearly-nude models on Adipositivity, to actual plus-size models via Plus Model Magazine, to pictures of large-bodied female athletes. Since I'm no great shakes at drawing people from reality, and even less so at drawing them from my imagination, I'm tracing images to make myself a bunch of different croquis drawings to work from. They're turning out remarkably well, given that my hands shake!
All in all, I hope to be getting my butt in gear soon, and making 2012 the year that things really start happening with my business. Sorry again for the long silence!
See, I am A Dog Person(TM). I love just about anything with four feet and fur, but dogs hold a special place in my heart like nothing else. I had a wonderful dog from somewhere around age six until we had to put her to sleep when I was 18 due to congestive heart failure, after which I cried harder and longer than I ever have in my life, before or since. Since then, there has been a dog-shaped hole in my heart which periodic encounters with other people's dogs could only make more poignant. I've been meaning to get a dog for years now, but the time and circumstances never seemed right.
Early this year, all that changed when I adopted a rescued Bodeguero from Mallorca, who'd been given a new lease on life by a German dog rescue called Beschützer Instinkte ("protective instinct"). Apparently when Germans go to the Mediterranean or Eastern Europe on vacation, they abscond with homeless and mistreated dogs, to which I say "Go Germans!". She had been brought back to Germany by a delightful young woman named Sarah who'd gotten her own dog there five years ago, and who's successfully fostered a couple dogs since then. Sarah named her Frida for Frida Kahlo (Spanish, Mexican, close enough, right? :P), and then advertised her on Quoka.de, which seems to be the local equivalent of Craigslist.
Frida is a delightful dog, despite clearly having had a rough patch in life. She's an absolute charmer, to the extent that she's won over the two avowed Cat People she lives with besides me (though at 5 kg / 11 lbs., I've known and owned several cats larger than she is!). Christian adores playing and snuggling with her, and Lars is having a blast teaching her commands. She's super-smart, amazingly snuggly, and having had food security issues in her past, very easy to motivate with treats. Her only major downside, now that we've got the housebreaking issues mostly sorted out, is that she has a hardcore case of separation anxiety, and I am her Mommy-Security-Blanket-Person like WHOA. Add that to the fact that big city noises and experiences like public transit are very new and scary for her, and I've been seriously housebound in the last month and a half. Hence calling Frida my "anti-assistant". Gratuitous cute pictures of me with dog can be found here.
She's gradually getting better, but it's slow going. I passed off my ticket to go see Pirates of the Caribbean live at the Gasteig again tonight, since she's not ready to spend three hours without me even with a dog sitter. I cancelled plans to go to Berlin with Christian this weekend since no way in hell she's ready to be separated from me for a weekend. The only reason I'm not in a panic about our plans for Paris at the end of March is that Sarah has kindly agreed to dog-sit Frida then, and hopefully I'll get her to do so again in June when we go to New York.
Yup, you read that right: Paris and New York! Oh my goodness gracious, people! I've been through both cities just to travel via the airports (actually on the same trip, now that I think about it), but I've never actually been IN either city! I'm totally stoked! Where do I go plus-size shopping, folks?? Clue me in!
On the business front, things have been slow going even for reasons other than Frida. Thanks to my having SAD (or "winter depression" as it's so aptly called in all the other Germanic languages), this is my lethargic, low-energy time of the year. While it's SO much better here than it was in Denmark, it's still been like pulling teeth to make myself get stuff done. Also, I will confess, I'm a bit of a video game addict. While many of my friends have been playing Skyrim, which would be like heroin for me, I've been making do with my methadone version by playing the deluxe version of Oblivion, the previous title in the Elder Scrolls series. And I really have to say, playing any video game while using the projector to create a two-meter "monitor screen" on the south wall of our living room KICKS EVER-LOVING ASS! Ahem. That said, I haven't been spending all of my time gaming, which makes Lars very proud of me.
There's also been a major hiccup on the workshop front. Ingrid, the woman I rent from, had a small stroke or aneurysm in her brain shortly after I started renting from her, and it has left her with a jag in her visual field that's made it impossible to continue making jewelry, the poor love. With a heavy heart, she's decided to close her studio and not renew her lease on her workshop, which means I'm out of a space as of March 31st. In truth, though, it was too far away to be practical, so this is really a blessing in disguise. I'm sincerely considering a space in Kultfabrik, which is close enough to be a single bus ride and roughly 7 minute walk away (or upwards of 15 minutes in deep snow with a recalcitrant dog, but I digress), and easy biking distance once the weather clears up. The one major downside is that it's too big and expensive for my current needs, so I'll have to find a subletter for part of it, but that's not looking too impossible.
I've been working with my fantastic graphic designer on spiffy graphics for the web version of my body type survey, so hopefully the site can go live in a month or so. I'm really looking forward to having data to look at. Data is so much fun! Sue and I are working on a customizable plus-size knee sock knitting pattern, and I've been having a blast collecting and looking at the data just for feet, ankles, calves, and knees, so I can't wait to start working with whole bodies!
I've also been working on making some plus-size croquis drawings to design over. For those not familiar with the term, a croquis (or "crokey" as it's often written online by design students who've only heard it said and never seen it spelled) is a line drawing of a body that you can use as a two-dimensional mannequin to design garments on. Plus size versions are virtually unknown. Therefore, I've been gathering pictures of diverse fat bodies, from nude or nearly-nude models on Adipositivity, to actual plus-size models via Plus Model Magazine, to pictures of large-bodied female athletes. Since I'm no great shakes at drawing people from reality, and even less so at drawing them from my imagination, I'm tracing images to make myself a bunch of different croquis drawings to work from. They're turning out remarkably well, given that my hands shake!
All in all, I hope to be getting my butt in gear soon, and making 2012 the year that things really start happening with my business. Sorry again for the long silence!
Friday, December 16, 2011
Adventures of an Accidental Fat-shion Designer: An employee of sorts!
I've been altogether too bad about updating my blog lately, but in my defense, life keeps interfering.
Fantastic bit of news, however: I now have an employee of sorts! Sue is an Australian woman about 15 years older than me, who given when she grew up and where she went to school, had to take 5 years of sewing in school, including fitting and pattern drafting. She has mad skills that have been in practice since she was quite young, as she was the oldest of seven kids, and her mom sewed and knit out of necessity. She's been coming out to the workshop with me a couple days a week (when I haven't been sick), and has the great advantage of being willing to work for things like custom-made clothing and yarn out of my stash, at least until my business actually has customers.
Having someone to be responsible to and for is also helping me a lot with motivation to get out to the workshop and do stuff, plus there's a lot of things in garment construction where an experienced second pair of hands is just invaluable. I'm positive Sue will be an unimaginably great asset to my business!
Fantastic bit of news, however: I now have an employee of sorts! Sue is an Australian woman about 15 years older than me, who given when she grew up and where she went to school, had to take 5 years of sewing in school, including fitting and pattern drafting. She has mad skills that have been in practice since she was quite young, as she was the oldest of seven kids, and her mom sewed and knit out of necessity. She's been coming out to the workshop with me a couple days a week (when I haven't been sick), and has the great advantage of being willing to work for things like custom-made clothing and yarn out of my stash, at least until my business actually has customers.
Having someone to be responsible to and for is also helping me a lot with motivation to get out to the workshop and do stuff, plus there's a lot of things in garment construction where an experienced second pair of hands is just invaluable. I'm positive Sue will be an unimaginably great asset to my business!
Friday, November 4, 2011
BookBlog: Time & Money
This is my first installment in a series on my blog which basically consists of book reports, though nowhere near as formal and organized as the ones you had to do in school. Though I’ve always been widely read, my foray into entrepreneurship has had me delving into the business section at the bookstore for the first time in my life, and I’m learning many new things that I want to remember and share.
My first BookBlog is on Time & Money: How to Spend the Rest of Your Life, by Sonja Becker and Martin Sage. You may recall this from a previous entry as the book I was supposed to sell as a part of my participation in the JCP. While the book is deeply flawed, it is not totally without merit, and does pose some questions that are useful for focusing my goals, which I will answer here.
What are my values?
What is my mission?
My first BookBlog is on Time & Money: How to Spend the Rest of Your Life, by Sonja Becker and Martin Sage. You may recall this from a previous entry as the book I was supposed to sell as a part of my participation in the JCP. While the book is deeply flawed, it is not totally without merit, and does pose some questions that are useful for focusing my goals, which I will answer here.
What are my values?
- Improving the lives of women, both those close to me and those in the wider world.
- Improving the lives of people I care about by helping them to become the best versions of themselves that they can be.
- Helping fat women of all shapes and sizes to look and feel great about themselves, outside and inside.
- To protect and improve the environment by striving to live and work sustainably.
- To take care of my physical, mental, and emotional health so I do not become a burden on those I love.
- To create a comfortable, welcoming home for myself and my loved ones, so that it nurtures and recharges us, and creates a positive feelings for the friends and family who visit us for shorter or longer periods.
- To strive to be the best version of myself that I can be through self-knowledge and self-improvement.
What is my mission?
- To help big, fat, and in-betweenie women to look and feel fabulous.
- To create a company that is consistent with my values, which will positively impact the lives of both my customers and my employees.
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Adventures of an Accidental Fat-shion Designer: DSD Reunion
Last weekend I went up to Denmark for the student reunion party at the Scandinavian Design College which, as those of you not associated with DSD may recall, is where I spent three months in fall of 2010 in the Fashion & Textile program. Had Lars not gotten the job with Google in Munich, I probably would have been there all year, but even just those three months were amazingly rich with learning and networking and making friends, even though I was about 15 years older on average than most of my classmates.
The reunion was a great deal of fun, though probably even more so for the younger folks (after all, I can't really drink much anymore, which puts a bit of a kibosh on any serious partying). I spent a fun bit of time getting a cartooning lesson from my friend Christoffer, though he runs such circles around me that I may end up just hiring him later to make the cartoony characters I want for using in my business materials. I also spent nice amount of time in creative collaboration with my friend Anna Vester, a fantastically talented young graphic designer whom I've hired to design my logo and related materials. Not only did I discover that she actually feels personally invested in my project, since most of the women on her mom's side of the family fit in my target demographic, but she also brought some fantastic feedback and ideas to the whole branding and logo aspect of my business.
To whit, one major sea change: I've decided not to call my label "Queen in my Own Mind", though I'll keep my blog address as such for now (after all, until such point as I start doing work for clients, my business really is "in my own mind", and the whole idea of being "queen in my own mind" works nicely for the fashion-diva persona I'll need to cultivate if I want to make it big in this business, no pun intended). After considering Anna Vester's feedback and ideas, and then brainstorming a bit, I've decided that my primary design brand will be called "Queen Margaret", and my re-designs will naturally be "Queen Margaret II".
I'm really happy with this change of track for a number of reasons, not least of which for sounding more serious and having more gravitas, but also since there are and have been some fantastic Queen Margarets through history, and Margaret is not only my name, but the name of my beloved favorite aunt, who was in turn named for my great-grandmother (and there may be more Margarets further back; I actually don't know). It fits very nicely with my plan to have my logo look something like a royal monogram (AV is excited about all the possibilities that Q gives as a letter). I can't wait to see what she comes up with!
The reunion was a great deal of fun, though probably even more so for the younger folks (after all, I can't really drink much anymore, which puts a bit of a kibosh on any serious partying). I spent a fun bit of time getting a cartooning lesson from my friend Christoffer, though he runs such circles around me that I may end up just hiring him later to make the cartoony characters I want for using in my business materials. I also spent nice amount of time in creative collaboration with my friend Anna Vester, a fantastically talented young graphic designer whom I've hired to design my logo and related materials. Not only did I discover that she actually feels personally invested in my project, since most of the women on her mom's side of the family fit in my target demographic, but she also brought some fantastic feedback and ideas to the whole branding and logo aspect of my business.
To whit, one major sea change: I've decided not to call my label "Queen in my Own Mind", though I'll keep my blog address as such for now (after all, until such point as I start doing work for clients, my business really is "in my own mind", and the whole idea of being "queen in my own mind" works nicely for the fashion-diva persona I'll need to cultivate if I want to make it big in this business, no pun intended). After considering Anna Vester's feedback and ideas, and then brainstorming a bit, I've decided that my primary design brand will be called "Queen Margaret", and my re-designs will naturally be "Queen Margaret II".
I'm really happy with this change of track for a number of reasons, not least of which for sounding more serious and having more gravitas, but also since there are and have been some fantastic Queen Margarets through history, and Margaret is not only my name, but the name of my beloved favorite aunt, who was in turn named for my great-grandmother (and there may be more Margarets further back; I actually don't know). It fits very nicely with my plan to have my logo look something like a royal monogram (AV is excited about all the possibilities that Q gives as a letter). I can't wait to see what she comes up with!
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