Trial & Error: The Birth of a Designer

I am a believer. I believe that you can achieve ANYTHING and EVERYTHING that you want through faith in God and yourself. For years and years, I have created "clothing lines" when I say "create" maybe I had samples but no marketing plan or a marketing plan and no samples. There was never any finality. One of my earliest clothing line (Circa 2001), Ruby Jean named after my Grandmother Ruby Jean was a blend of an urban and diffusion line. There were fun, funky skirts, sexy dresses and fly denim. Then there was Aiyana Anaya, later my sister Amarie named her two daughters after this line so I am forever grateful. Aiyana Anaya was very sultry and soulful, it was inspired by nature and spirituality.

The Birth of a Designer

I have been designing clothes for as long as I can remember. My mother was a computer programmer by day and a seamstress by night. As a young girl, I would watch her make fly dresses out of satin and silk. I wanted to do that. I would often sneak and use her machine or "borrow" one of her design books. I would always get in trouble of course.


I recall that my mother had a scrapbook that was very dear to her. She would look through different magazines ( Vogue, Essence, Ebony, Bazaar), cut out different designer dresses, shoes and eye wear then place then in her scrapbook. I was obsessed with her scrapbook. I started to copy my mother and cut out my own pictures that I wanted to go into her scrapbook. You can imagine that my cutouts were jagged, rough and very bizarre because they were. 

Needless to say, my cutouts never made it into my mother's scrapbook, she did something different. When I was in 4th grade, she enrolled me in a sewing class at Earle Elementary School on Hermitage Avenue on the South side of Chicago. I learned the different parts of the sewing machine. My favorite thing was making a purse out of a pair of jeans. My sewing ability paid off all through college, I would mend and make clothing for the girls in my dorm at Clark Atlanta for a small fee of course. I even had the opportunity for my designs to appear in an upscale boutique in Atlanta but I disagree with the boutique owner. She wanted me to give her my clothing then paid me once the pieces sold. Her cut was 70%, I did not need to be an Accounting major to know that she was trying to exploit my desire to be "discovered".