It was in Auckland; New Zealand 1999, at The Club. I was a doe-eyed fashion student, fresh grad with a few awards under my belt, and I thought I was going to make it BIG, mistake number ONE. The trouble was mistake number TWO, which was never expecting to fall in love that very same year. Mistake number THREE was that I under-estimated the power of LOVE, which finally & completely annulled my desire for FAME.
The Club was packed to the brim that night. The Un-Fashion Show was on. My divinely tall & thin girlfriends all turned up for me, giving up their time for free to wear my designs, an opportunity to be seen & to strut down the runway. Everyone volunteered their time for free, including a superb photographer, a makeup artist and a hairstylist. We were all under the fairy dust of the could be & would be, hopefully not exactly just "wannabes", the promise of fame & success. And it was a success, so to speak. A few established designers stole some of my ideas for their collections; an ironically successful result. The media turned up; Pavement Mag described my collection as "naughty but nice", even I had to agree with that! For me, though, THE DESIGNER, under the facade of my business & busyness, my heart had already left my chest.
Where was your heart, you ask? It was in the UK!
In the UK, at the end of a very long phone wire & snail mail, it was 1999, I had fallen in love with a house-surgeon! I had spoken to him on the phone once, had seen a picture of him laughing so hard the nerves were popping in his neck, he promised to call me back in a week but rang again the very next day, he made me laugh, and I fell in love with him.
Not my own brand new label, new atelier store open, runway show a roaring success & press adoration, other designers stealing my ideas, the promise of fame & fortune or wild horses could have stopped me from leaving it all behind. I shut my workroom, my showroom, my newest collection unworn and unsold on the racks and flew to the UK to be with him.
and yes, it is a happily ever after story, very happily am I still with HIM without the FAME and will do it all over again the same exact way, in a heartbeat!
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