August 2023. 

Part 1.

Back in the most serendipitous city in the world

Life is something funny sometimes. Talk about a full circle moment.

How is it that I’m back in the city a full decade after graduating from Parsons, The New School of Design, to enrol my daughter into college? 

In truth, my fashion journey is what it is because it’s intertwined with a personal stroke motherhood stroke family story relating in particular to my daughter.

The drama and angst of a working mother is numbing to the core. 

I worked long days flat out the whole entire pregnancy with my daughter . The ‘cup is half full’ part of the story is that I was at least working for myself – so you understand the context. 

The early days of South Africa’s democracy (my daughter was born a decade  after the dawning of a new dispensation in the beloved country) were euphoric, heady days.

Like an out of control hosepipe, unleashing hope, spraying joyous visceral energy everywhere.

Hustle, ambition and the smell of freedom still hung like fresh new leather. Possibility was thick in the air like the humidity of a New York summer . 

And my husband and I, who came of age in the new dawn of South Africa, were making our dreams real. 

And that meant balancing a new marriage, a toddler, a new born, and a new company I co-founded with my husband partner. After 7 years in the corporate world building my marketing expertise and skills, it felt good to be an entrepreneur and work for myself. It’s a slog I didn’t mind. 

My fashion story has Its origins in an interview (two , in fact) and a serendipitous moment in a serendipitous city. 

The first of the interviews that set the ball rolling was wedged somewhere deep in the memory bank. It was something I read -a magazine print interview or story about the only Gucci man IMO that matters. Handsome and talented, he was the design ‘force majeure’ that breathed new life into the house from 1990 and set it on a path towards dizzying heights. 

TOM FORD. 

And he attended Parsons – The New School of design. That’s the part that stuck. 

So when I walked down 5th ave one day in 2009 and passed a building that said The New School and Parsons (can’t remember exactly) I stopped in my tracks. Boom! 

Hit with serendipity. A sort of serendipitous explosion. Giving the feels of Awareness coming Online? If you can imagine that…From nowhere apparently, a quiet yet stupendously magical knowing I still recall to mind even now.

But what happened next was I said, “oh, Tom Ford went here”, to no -one in particular . And carried on walking.  

At the time of that trip it had been a couple years on the entrepreneurial road and I was beginning to fizz. We had recently moved into a new house (yes , a building project too) and I had a creepy flashing red light lurking in my inner being. Discomfort first, then doubt. And then disconnect. Like a warning signal. I was worried and anxious that my daughter was growing fast and that I hadn’t spent enough time with her. And in a strange way I didn’t feel connected enough to her, enough to say I had a relationship with her as small as she was. I had worked straight through my pregnancy with her until the day she was born. The notion was ‘this is not the first pregnancy’ and ‘been through it all before’ so you get on with the get on. Don’t ask me why now, but that’s how it was. 

And then went straight back to work after. No break. 

The day I saw Indra Nooyi, then CEO of PepsiCo talking on CNBC (this is interview no. 2),  I froze like I was trying to win at freeze dance. I listened to her talking about the difficulty of the work/life balance which I knew too well, and her challenging relationship with her daughter.  And it was then that I knew what to do.

But what I didn’t know was just how much more anxiety would reveal itself when you pull the plug on work.  It was like withdrawal symptoms from the constant pump of pressure working puts you under. And I sometimes found myself weirded out by the few still times punctuating my new daily routine, focusing on mommy duties and responsibilities.

My mind couldn’t handle it. It was always a question of What’s next? hanging in the background.

The battle between full time Mom and working woman continued relentlessly throughout my ‘Mommy Sabbatical’, even though I had chosen sides.  A silent and ruthless struggle over one’s worth, value and purpose.

By the winter of 2011, I had decided on a new course and direction.

Everything was set.

I had a US study visa , so did the family and we were on our way to New York City because Mommy was going to study fashion and get her second degree: an Associate of Applied Science Fashion Marketing from Parsons, The New school of design. 

But then tragedy struck. And in a flash it seemed everything was up in smoke. I wasn’t even sure we could leave anymore! 

What happens next… drops on 25.11.23

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