Almost 5 years ago I bought a piece of wool tweed in candy pink from my favourite couture fabric store in Amsterdam. It has thick woven stripes in different shades of pink and I thought, the patterns would look even better if I cut the fabric in diagonal. I was going to make an oversized flat caps as the combination of bold and masculine shape and girly colour of the fabric would be interesting. I made one and thought it turned out exactly as I wanted and thought it was such a clever piece.
That was around the time I started demure and started having contacts with ‘industry experts’. And you know what!? They didn’t like the candy pink cap! Instead I was given lots of reports from fashion weeks and all sorts of forecast. Feeling uber insecure after embarking on my journey of fashion business, I scrapped the pink cap and started studying hard all the reports and started making things according to what I learned. As a result, yes, demure became a kind of visible brand with a reputation of trendy couture, with which I had absolutely no problem with. Basically any mood/character/trend/style inspire me. I quickly start thinking what would look nice for this outfit or on this person and I enjoy that process. So I did enjoy being inspired by seasonal collections of great fashion houses and at that time, I somehow believed that it was a way to go as a business.
After a while, my collection remained couture and high quality but design wise it became a bit too predictable and the collection as a whole seem to lack variety. But for the sake of ‘consistency’, I kind of stuck to popular or ‘safe’ designs for a while.
Then this lock down started and it became a bit of challenge to source fabrics to continue making these ‘safe’ items. At the same time I started thinking about important of uniqueness and exclusiveness. Presenting m what I thought might be trendy is one great service, but I also started to want to present what I thought might be an interesting alternative, thinking that it is ok to believe my choice and design as someone who had professional training in making hats.
The small piece if the candy pink fabric was amongst the materials that I dragged out of my fabric stash. It was just enough to make one flat cap, as I did a long time ago. Then I put it on my online shop and posted a photo on Instagram.
Oh lord, I lost the count of people who made kind and positive comments! The cap was quickly snapped up by a lovely lady who I know has great taste of her own, like other people who wanted it.
This experience taught me an important lesson. As a small independent brand which wants to remain independent and special, it is important to stick to its gun and continue to make decisions independently and produce special things even if that seem to put you in a lonely place. My excuse for not doing so is insecurity from trying to navigate in such a competitive industry as a small player but I should still have believed in my knowledge and judgement as someone trained in this specific area. And again, it was my customers who helped me through by saying ‘Hey, I like this crazy hat and never found it elsewhere!’ So thank you. Collections at demure will now be as eclectic and crazy as it once was before and I hope you will find what you’ve been long looking for amongst them!
