When I studied 22 years ago there were no degree programmes, I simply went into the clothing industry accepting that after a year of intense study with Gordon Flack-Davidson I would have to spend 4 years in apprenticeship being considered qualified by the union or any prospective employer.
I entered the industry as a fitting model with some pattern experience, jobs were scarce, and I took what I could. Having done fittings at college I knew that the job would give me an in. Within a short period of time I was an assistant pattern maker to the head designer. Within 9 months I was running a production line in the CMT of 200+ machinists. I spent a further 9 months carrying 30kg of denim 8 hours a day, I was dreadfully unhappy and spent many a lunch time crying in the toilets. My saving grace was the infinite kindness that I was shown by the various women on the line who took me as one of their own; I was 19 at the time and totally unprepared for the speed and intensity that a well-run factory works at. With their guidance I truly learnt to sew, they taught me to “steal with my eyes” I watched how their hands would guide the fabric on the machine, gentle holding the sleeve up as they fed it into the armhole creating the shape that would eventually hold a sleeve pipe in the round.
Finally, in pure frustration, I left the denim factory and got a job in a factory that produced ranges and had a pleating plant. One of the pivotal moments in this job as a junior patternmaker was meeting a gracious lady called Naomi Jules. She had an ethereal beauty of a woman of an indeterminate age, who wore her beautiful waist length hair in a bun religiously. Naomi ran the pleating plant and did all the grading. I will ever associate the smell of damp paper with the pleating steam boxes and my privileged time with Naomi. Naomi graded with a mechanical arm that would shift the grading increments in unison. Naomi took what college had taught me about grading and transformed it into a dance, a moving meditation where control gave finesse and subtle attention to keeping styling details balanced and in proportion.
In hind sight I was now fully prepared to meet my original ambition: to work for one of South Africa’s most talented designer’s Clive Rundle.
While I was studying at Gordon, Clive was doing a refresher course, when our paths crossed. At the time Clive was a rising star, I had helped him make a facing pattern for one of his garments one afternoon while we were all desperately cramming in for final patterns. I liked him immediately.
I joined Clive as head pattern maker and found myself deeply fore filled in the company of likeminded people. My work with Clive was symbiotic and stretched me as a pattern maker technically. I absolutely adored Clive and he treated me with respect and consideration, something that had been lacking in my previous factory experiences. When I left Clive’s full-time employment I had put all the systems in place to give Clive the freedom to be the unfettered Designer and empowered the staff to manage the factory in a self-directed way as a small team.
When I started freelancing in 1995, I wanted flexibility in working hours, and the adventure of specialising as a patternmaker/grader for different designers. By this stage I knew that being a designer held no fascination for me. The way I see it is, I know what goes on in my own head, but finding the key to unlock what goes on in a designers head is deeply fascinating. Learning to interpret a designers sketch, often in raw energy and inspiration is an exhilarating co-creating process. This symbiosis happens for me differently with different designers. With Clive it wasn’t necessarily comfortable, he used to joke that he knew he was on track when I would involuntarily start to pull a horrid face.
In the time that I have freelanced I have had the privilege of working in many diverse areas of patterns and grading. From working on a tender for correctional services to produce vests that were S.A.B.S. approved (no mean feat as the grading specs were very unusual) to making kiddies patterns, independent ranges for designers and corporate wear.
The pinnacle for me happened while calling a show for Clive, during New York Fashion Week in 2002. He exhibited in the Library (very privileged as a lot of the designers are in the tents outside in the library gardens) I remember thinking during the rehearsal “this is more than I had ever hoped to achieve”
In 2006 I was asked by Marianne Fassler to facilitate the fitting process for the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy, I had freelance for Marianne for some time already. Marianne gave me carte blanch to put a team of fitters together. We worked under pretty challenging conditions in a very high-profile setting.
To put it into perspective, 10 fitters in 10 days allocated 5 000 units to 150 learners. We fitted each learner with everything from shoes and bras to blazers. Often bearing witness to learners being totally emotionally overwhelmed by receiving their first brand new pair of shoes. Part of what Oprah had stipulated was that we were to use only women where possible. This meant that as a team we had to carry the 5 000 garments from the gymnasium into the hostel allocating each uniform into the learner’s bedroom cupboards. It was physically gruelling work moving the 5 000 units, over the 10 days I lost 2% body fat. If New York was the pinnacle, the Oprah Winfrey Foundation was the cherry on top.
It was during the early two thousands that I started to realise that I truly could be all that I wanted to be. I had grown up in a home of very humble means, with a difficult scholastic background, having been labelled as “a student of below average intelligence”. Not realising that I had learning difficulties my mum encouraged me to get a trade. I was artistic and good with my hands and had shown some aptitude for sewing, having learnt how to sew on my great-grandmothers hand operated Husqvarna machine (which I inherited that stills sew beautifully today).
Meeting my goals and living everything I had dreamed of and some of what I could not have hoped for even in my wildest imagination helped me to gain confidence and re-frame some of the “labels” that the system had put on me. I entered into analysis weekly and started a dedicated commitment to my self-development as a person. My own struggle has made me passionately committed to living in the realm of possibility for myself and to see it in others.
There had been a very sacred, secret dream that I would one day work with people in a therapeutic role. It was during this time that I started doing one off pieces for private clients with a different consciousness. What if I started to address some of the underlying issues a person was feeling, and how would this affect their wardrobe expression? Why is it that certain people will simply not wear certain garments, textures, or colours?
And this started my next big adventure, Feminine Archetypes. Having been in analysis with Dr Suzan Hojdar, my imagination came alive when she presented a 2-day residential workshop connecting women with the Goddess within using Jung’s understanding of archetypes. I asked her if I could perhaps bring some props and wardrobe to give a kinaesthetic experience to the workshop. Well it was amazing, truly a fantastic coming together of understanding myself, and women and how the archetypes that deeply affects us, and how we express ourselves in clothing. Understanding the archetype will give a very clear indication of a personality’s strengths and where the challenges may lie. Dr Suzan Hojdar has run the workshops for over 5 years and I continue to work in the background setting up the props and holding space for women to experience themselves differently.
In 2008 I understood that what I was doing with private clients and how I was mentoring young designers was in a sense coaching. This relatively new modality meant that I could help people deeply but not have to be a psychologist. I studied Coaching and Facilitation with the SETA, got into work supervision with the chairperson of the Gauteng COMENSA (Coaches and Mentors of South Africa) and went exploring in a new field of business.
2009 I realised that I could combine my love for good food, nutrition and physical exercise with the coaching. I qualified as a Metagenics First Line Therapy coach. My work with one on one client’s grew and I found myself being referred outside of clothing to corporate women and men. Often the corporate women come to me for more traditional coaching and in a matter of time are ready to start changing their wardrobes and we start to include wardrobe makeover as part of the process.
It was during this time that I stopped doing pattern work and started coaching and group facilitation. I had been asked by a coaching client to take a team through a self-development process. One team soon became 3 and the self-development process turned into a 12 module workshops of 5 hours each. This collective of leadership development workshops I run with great success today in corporate business.
Feeling as strongly as I do about the clothing industry I realised that I was thrilled and happy to continue on this new adventure but unwilling to take my knowledge out of the industry. So, I developed the master classes and started to run them, using the facilitation techniques that I had learnt.
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