In the 9 months it has taken to build, destroy, remodel, destroy again and then finally launch Pepper Your Talk I’ve had a lot to work on! My thoughts have raced onto 3 notepads full of questions and queries. Yet the Olympian of them all, the one that ran the hardest and longest, was:“Who do I want Pepper Your Talk to be?”
I’ve been told that the best businesses aren’t businesses at all, because they’re built to behave like real people. Well, Pepper Your Talk is so close to my heart that it only really made sense to frame ‘her’ around her maker, the Mother – Me. In case you hadn’t heard, I’m quite commonly known as Pepper’s Mum.
I’ve also been told that the first step in making something real is being someone real. So there I began the discovery of who I am and why I’m doing this. Let me just say, self-reflection is one of the hardest processes – You think you know but you have no idea!
Around that same time, without even asking, Iris Apfel told me this: (via Youtube)
“First you have to know yourself, if you don’t know yourself then just forget it. Knowing yourself is not the easiest thing in the world and it’s often very painful and it takes a long time. You have to look in the mirror…people often look in the mirror and see someone else” – So deep and so true!
So here’s what I realised…Every fashion person I know can reference ‘a moment’, a special and personal memory in which clothing had changed everything for them. Yet, even when asked who my favourite fashion designers are, in which I chose:
- Proenza Schouler
- Phillip Lim
- Roksanda Ilincic
It then dawned on me that I hadn’t even caught up on any of my ‘favourite’ designers most recent shows. And realised that, for me, when it comes to fashion clothes aren’t BAE (Before all else).I wrote down my reasons for why I loved the above designers and for Roksanda I wrote,
“I had never heard of Roksanda until I worked on the first floor in Harvey Nichols. Walking passed her seasonal selection of colours everyday made me proud to be a black girl because I knew I’d look good in those bold brights. I almost wanted to say thanks for including me”
So yeah, that comment is in fact about clothes, but more importantly about what Roksanda reminded me about myself. Fashion to me has always been about emotion and reality, creativity and community.I’ll be honest and say, I did struggle to accept the fact that when it came to clothes, fashion shows, personal style and Pepper Your Talk, I actually had nothing to write or even think sometimes. How would I ever be the next Man Repeller if I couldn’t even bring myself to paint pictures with my musings on silhouettes and shapes? But that is exactly the point, it’s not about the clothes for me, never has been and probably never will be.
So post-evaluation and back to the point:“Who do I want Pepper Your Talk to be?”I can actually say that I’m a very proud Mum raising a girl, called Pepper, that probably cares a bit too much about the wrong things – but she cares. She might miss the point, but in doing so she’s framing a whole new one. She’s emotional, loves a chat and thinks about fashion in different ways. But most importantly she’s real …really real!
And as I’m writing this, the significance of the 9 months it’s taken to ‘create’ Pepper has just hit me! This couldn’t have happened at any other time, it needed to be around 40 weeks or she’d have been premature. Pepper needed me to help her grow. But just as any parent would say that having a child changes your life – I, in turn, needed Pepper for my personal growth.
So here I am dropping my baby at her first day at the school of life. I worry about her making friends, fitting in, I just worry about her. I hope you enjoy Pepper – connect with her, grow with her…then share her with your world.
Dior x