In 1993, I moved to New York City and I arrived here knowing that my future was here in America
and it was going to be wonderful and I had all these letters from Christian Lacroix who
was introducing me to Donna Karen, Ralph Lauren, Will Glass, Oscar de la Renta, Mark Jacobs.
I went to see Ralph Lauren, met Ralph himself at Madison Avenue in his amazing office that
was shaking like a leaf.
He's going through my portfolio and he's nodding and he gets to the project I did for
Dior and it was based on a spiral staircase and he said, why did you choose this staircase?
I'm like, I just loved the curve, the curvilinear lines and I loved the scroll work on the ballast
rods.
He said, where did you get this image from?
I said, I tore it out of some magazine when I was living in Paris.
I don't remember.
He said, that's my home, a Connecticut.
I'm like, wow, I had no idea that it was his staircase so he's very excited.
He said, okay, I see potential here.
This is great.
We will be in touch with you.
I think I floated down Madison Avenue.
I was like, oh my God, I'm getting a job at Ralph Lauren.
I was so excited.
Three months later, I finally got a letter from them, a regret saying, we liked you
very much, blah, blah, blah, but no, whatever, whatever, nothing ever happened at Ralph Lauren
and so that was very disappointing.
So I was beginning to become very dissillusioned that New York wasn't working out.
I'd been here six months.
I was staying with friends of the family from a woman from Ballyhike who lived here who
had a monogramming business and I was monogramming towels and shirts.
The big designers, I wasn't getting anywhere so I went to Saks Fifth Avenue and looked
at all the evening wear designers that were working in New York at the time and this young
designer, Karma Mark Valvo, had a beautiful collection at Saks Fifth Avenue and a wonderful
ad campaign that just came out on Harper's Bazaar and I applied to Karma Mark Valvo.
Within two weeks, I got a letter inviting me in for an interview.
So I go in for the interview and I meet with Karma's design director who was a very funny
guy called Philip and Philip, the reason which I found out later, the only reason he had me
come in was because I worked at Lacroix because Philip was a huge fan of ABFAB, the British
television series that makes fun of fashion and Lacroix and the fact that someone had
worked at Lacroix, they thought was hilarious and they wanted to see the guy who worked
at Lacroix.
So that was the beginning of me finally getting a foothold in the fashion industry in New
York.
I remained at Karma for ten years, I went from being an assistant designer to a design
assistant to being his creative director.
After ten years, I wasn't even feeling that confident in my design skills because Karma
oversaw everything and I wasn't really been giving the freedom to be creative and I was
wondering if I would ever be creative enough to lead the company or maybe I just didn't
have the skill set.
It was getting to a point where after ten years it was a shaky time in my career.
When I got a phone call from this incredible woman called Fran Ornstein.
Mitchell Hopps, he's an amazing young Canadian man who is a great company, it's a partnership
with his brother and Neil Featherer, the three of them.
It's Montreal based, they're an evening wear company on Broadway and they just acquired
their license to Bachelor Mishka and they've hired me to sell it and I need a stellar designer
to design it and you came highly recommended.
Going home on the subway that night I'm thinking Lord of the Rings, Frodo had a Sam Ganji.
So if I can find a Sam Ganji I could do this.
And all of a sudden the name of Halla Mamish who was an intern of mine at Karma Mark Valvo
and actually we had hired her, I think she worked for us for six months or seven months
as a designer before she moved on to another company.
I thought if Halla came with me maybe I could do this because Halla always told me down
if ever you leave Karma I'll work for free for you out of the basement.
And I started here on April 18th which was 12 years ago.
We had so much work to do.
Halla would work from nine in the morning until three, four and five a.m.
And somehow, I don't know how, I managed to produce a collection in time for market that
became a huge success.
So that was three and a half years at Badjimishka.
In that time I got to be part of their runway shows, working closely with Mark and James.
Got to see my dresses on the most incredible celebrities from Nicole Kidman to Natalie
Portman, Julia Roberts.
And Mitchell decided it was time to renew the license and he decided he didn't want
to do it.
That Don had become successful enough he would relinquish the Badjimishka license and
start a new evening of our collection.
And it was up to me to create what the collection would be and what the brand was to be.
