It has been a long distance sprint to the finish line. You know when you think a reprieve from the hard work is just around the corner, so you run your hardest thinking the finish line is coming up? Alas, it’s just a mirage and there are more hills to climb.

It has been a very difficult month, but today I woke up before my alarm clock which I haven’t done in weeks. I’m guessing it’s because this past week I actually finished my collection in the tiny home studio I like to call Armageddon (because that’s what it looks like in here). I made the deadline with six hours to spare.

I woke before dawn, packed my collection and hailed a cab into Manhattan. I was filled with fear that perhaps I had made a body of work that wasn’t me and wouldn’t work. Had I forged a new path with blinders on?

But I arrived to smiling faces who were eager to play dress up and cheer me on. The wonderful photographer made me feel like a “real designer.” The Green Beauty Team (of course, I used an ethical girls dream team) was ready to make my vision come to life on a model that was sweet and different than the “MothLove” girls of yesteryear.

Everything about this day was new. I had never worked in an environment with a professional team. It made me feel like Super Woman, but Super Woman after a long battle. At one point I almost cried. The model was dressed, her hair and make up finished. The lighting was ready and music played the anthem of the day. Then my concept came around the corner and looked better than I could have imagined. It was like a phoenix rising from the ashes. The new Gretchen Jones appeared.

And just like that it was over. You might think I’d be relieved, yet my to do list seems larger than ever. The next leg of this race involves branding and launching, with a turn-around-time that seems impossible to achieve. But again, impossibilities seem to knock on my door more often than a friend these days.

As I wrap up one project and move onto the next I wonder when it will hit me, just how far I’ve come.

The day after wrapping my shoots I was at New York Fashion Week (NYFW) presentations watching Bliss Lau’s artful show of ballerina dancers entangled in the most incredible leather and chain garments. A designer I’ve admired for so long, right there in front of me, pushing herself the way I hope to. Making me want more, never looking back except to appreciate where I’ve been.

This season I find myself submerged in the scene, rather than looking through the window. Fearing I still don’t speak the language, I have to jump in. This game isn’t for the light at heart.

My dance card is full this week and NYFW beckons me like a moth to a flame. I may be a whole new me, but I’m just learning how to spread my wings.

Image credit: Gretchen Jones

This is the sixth piece in a new series at EcoSalon with Project Runway winner and sustainable fashion designer Gretchen Jones. For Jones, her daily apprenticeship with the “school of life” has been her guiding teacher and we look forward to bearing witness to her weekly inspiration collages, featuring ideas and scenes from the streets and parties of New York City, where she recently located. As well as her innate sense of style she’ll be pulling from a world of patterns, textures and all the designers who have preceded her.

The post Week 6: My Designer Life By Gretchen Jones of Project Runway appeared first on EcoSalon.

The price of fashion, at least the price of being a designer, costs a whole lot more than any dollar sign could ever quantify.

I’m exhausted mentally and physically. My brain cells need to be fully restored. Emotionally, I feel withered away. The last time any friendly interactions were had without that ever-present subconscious awareness of deadlines looming seems so far away.

To be honest, I cannot remember the last time my pace was slowed – perhaps it was as far away as the summer of 2009. Having the opportunity to smell the roses and truly relax, relate and replenish has taken a back seat to ambition, desperation (at times) and timing. Yes, I’m sure you think that with all my opportunities life would be nothing but cheery – but it’s actually the opposite. Added pressure, not enough time, new found stigmas attached to my personality, pressure, exhaustion in the idea realm – shall I go on?

The glamorous facade we all see in magazines and red carpets is truly the smoke in mirrors that barely reflects the realities of playing fashion hard ball. It’s a labor of love, nothing more. No one should work 18 hour days, six days a week while basically playing a risky game of roulette.

Did you know that the average start up cost for developing a single collection is over $30,000?

The estimated funding/backing needed to launch a label is 1.5-2 million, with a solid $250,000 in the bank ready to pay out for first collections – just to develop samples, shoot them and prepare for sales (all this with no guarantee of success). Plus, the time lines for developing and preparing collections are usually at least four months. I’m working on about two months and much less than $30,000. It’s as if the drug is the stress and the high is the finished body of work. It’s never finished until the deadline hits, when you go dark for a second and then pick yourself up by the (hopefully chic) boot straps and prepare to do it all over again.

So I find myself wondering, at the final hour with three garments to finish, two to edit and 23.5 hours to go – is it worth all this stress and sleep deprivation, lost relationships and risk of ending up broke?

Yes. Of course.

The least I can say is that I can’t get enough of it and it has always been that way. Fashion chose me, not the other way around. As I progress as a designer, I’m finding that I would like to refine the approach.

And I hope that in 24, excuse me, no, 23 hours, the cost of everything I’ve put myself through will come to fruition. It’s never good enough, I always wish I could do things better, I always walk away with a million ideas that didn’t get the time to be developed…but that’s what the next collection is for, right?

This completed collection – the one after I show you what I’ve created in a tiny room on the floor – will deliver some free time to embrace where it is I have come from. It will give me a momentary respite so I can take a long walk in the park, be proud and get back up again to try to one up myself next time.

The learning curve is just too fun to ride. I guess I’ll just stay buckled in.

This is the fifth piece in a new series at EcoSalon with Project Runway winner and sustainable fashion designer Gretchen Jones. For Jones, her daily apprenticeship with the “school of life” has been her guiding teacher and we look forward to bearing witness to her weekly inspiration collages, featuring ideas and scenes from the streets and parties of New York City, where she recently located. As well as her innate sense of style she’ll be pulling from a world of patterns, textures and all the designers who have preceded her.

The post Week 5: My Designer Life By Gretchen Jones of Project Runway appeared first on EcoSalon.

Ugh.

I’ve hit a wall. I hate everything I’m making. I have no energy or love for what it is I am creating and I feel like I’ve stepped down a path I’m not sure I am in love with.

I hope that this is a perpetual feeling all designers feel. My fingers are crossed.

As I face unchangeable choices, decisive distinctions in the aesthetics of this new collection, I doubt my talent. I doubt the color pallette, the concept, the conceived silhouettes.

I’m frightened and the truth is, designers do not like to express such fear, the dark side of a glamorous world meant only to entice, not to share our insecurities with you. The truth is, I’m an artist and I am frightened. So much anticipation and interest in what I do next is making me totally freak out!

I have been given very little time to pull it together and I push to create work that inspires, yet pays homage to the work I’ve done in the last year, to give the garments people seem to have connected to a chance. Yet, from a creative point of view, it’s like painting with colors you mixed from a series past. I am not inspired to be re-hashing old concepts, I’m just not, but I feel drawn to giving them the chance to be loved and worn in a way I think they deserve. Double ugh.

The company I keep right now is solely the pattern paper on my floor (still cutting on hard wood floors as I was pre-Project Runway win) and it is begging me for more time. I am faced with the focus on refinement. On doing the best version of ideas I’ve already had. Once again the reality of design, rather than art hits me. I am creating for you, not me – or at least to some extent. Many of the pieces I am designing are in some sort of way retrospective, re-worked garments that you connected to but that I have just fallen out of love with. A “lovers quarrel” so to speak, but one within myself. I think for better or worse, that’s a sign of a good designer. Moving on the second they grow.

Perhaps it’s time for me to stop working on the elements within this collection that reflect on past works, and move onto the pieces that will challenge me, challenge you to think outside the box of what you think of as “Gretchen Jones.” It’s time to think architectural elements, not “Lady Of The Canyon,” or better yet, how I can meld the two.

I can do it, I am doing it – its just hard to do it alone. We artists [we designers], need our cheering sections. Especially coming off of a year/experience that so harshly critiqued not only my every stitch, but character. If I am to fail, I say fail hard. Blow it all at the craps table – I may just win big.

What a blessing it is to be troubled with issues such as these. Fifteen days and counting til the finish of a collection I hope to die for. Sleep and restful thoughts are just a glimmer on the horizon.

This is the third piece in a new series at EcoSalon with Project Runway winner and sustainable fashion designer Gretchen Jones. For Jones, her daily apprenticeship with the “school of life” has been her guiding teacher and we look forward to bearing witness to her weekly inspiration collages, featuring ideas and scenes from the streets and parties of New York City, where she recently located. As well as her innate sense of style she’ll be pulling from a world of patterns, textures and all the designers who have preceded her.

The post Week 3: My Designer Life by Gretchen Jones of Project Runway appeared first on EcoSalon.

Time stand still, please, could you?

That damn designer dilemma is here again with the always impending deadlines. And now with a trip to Costa Rica, I must learn how to accept it, how to use it and more importantly, how to embrace a break without letting go of momentum.

In Costa Rica, I wake to rose petal waves gently unfolding on the velvet shores and at the same time think how I could have left my life in this state of ground break? Construction just starting on a collection I can barely break from my breast yet had to. I needed to not only walk away from the studio in order to stop coddling it, but to these moments of sheer bliss before my entire life changes with the new collection.

I also needed to take off my rose colored glasses and settle into a new pair, ones that are the dark shade of inspiration.
My Costa Rican “quickie” couldn’t have come any sooner.

While there noticing the dark, heavy, glittering sand layered with lighter (in weight and color) tan powder, like two universal matters filtering through a flour sifter – yet somehow perpetually linked hand in hand. Coral matter flecked along the shore line like burnt umber freckles dancing atop the tan bosom of the sea. Sunsets so vivid and rich that the equator seemingly swallowed them whole, I let go of some worry while watching them be consumed. I left some of myself down there.

Walking off the plane back into the brisk east coast air, I feel baptized by the book of travel. I resolve to do it again soon. The creative spirit needs that. It needs new lenses and appreciation for other ways of life, as that is how we translate our character into the concept. Ethnic interpretations and texture from far away ground you, ground your designs, give you perspective, and a new way of speaking your own truth.

My bible is made of silks and wools this season which will envelop those restful nights like the warm winter blanket of work ethic. Back to the drawing board and sewing machine for me.

This is the second piece in a new series at EcoSalon with Project Runway winner and sustainable fashion designer Gretchen Jones. For Jones, her daily apprenticeship with the “school of life” has been her guiding teacher and we look forward to bearing witness to her weekly inspiration collages, featuring ideas and scenes from the streets and parties of New York City, where she recently located. As well as her innate sense of style she’ll be pulling from a world of patterns, textures and all the designers who have preceded her.

The post Week 2: My Designer Life by Gretchen Jones of Project Runway appeared first on EcoSalon.

Craft. Tradition. Skill. Sustained aesthetics.

As I find myself forever linked to native influences, I tend to think about the skill it takes to make things, well, well-made.

Time, action, finesse and a little bit of human mistake, too. It’s what makes a piece feel special – it’s the soul that is inevitably left by the maker. In some Native American crafts, mistakes are made intentionally, as it is believed the only one(s) who can be a perfectionist is the divine. I like that. I like being able to sense a person’s hand in what I am purchasing. It’s what makes it special, and in turn, worth the investment.

And as I find myself ever more connected to my trade skill and hands-on learning approach – I’m self-educated and apprenticed in many areas of handcraft – I am reminded of the wonderful quote:

“And I believe that the best learning process of any kind of craft is just to look at the work of others.”
– Wole Soyinka

I like the school of life, rather than the classroom.

This week’s imagery is pulled from areas within my own studio and soon-to-be launched new collection, but also many images that have formed my “signature” as a designer. I hope as you look at it, you can see past the label – and into the soul that feeds it.

This is the first in a new series at EcoSalon with Project Runway winner and sustainable fashion designer Gretchen Jones. For Jones, her daily apprenticeship with the “school of life” has been her guiding teacher and we look forward to bearing witness to her weekly inspiration collages, featuring ideas and scenes from the streets and parties of New York City, where she recently located. As well as her innate sense of style she’ll be pulling from a world of patterns, textures and all the designers who have preceded her.

The post My Designer Life by Gretchen Jones of Project Runway appeared first on EcoSalon.