How we got here.
It began with a shirt. Grace and I were wandering through a Southtowns boutique crawl, and I spotted a shirt for my toddler grandson. It was impossibly soft and the graphic was adorable. I purchased it immediately, but that shirt permeated my thoughts all day. If I loved it so much, and wanted to buy it immediately, were there other shirts in this clothing line? What did they look like?
I returned home to do a little retail research, and I discovered that the designer’s other shirts were just as enchanting. The whole line hovered within the same graphic parameter, and each shirt was cuter than the one before it. Why couldn't we make shirts too? It can’t be that difficult. With that one shirt as our inspiration, all we needed was a unifying idea.
Grace is the designer in the family, but we both have an affinity for style. Not high-end, frou-frou style. More like a comfortable come-sit-with-me style. We constantly strive to create and cultivate our own style for the world we inhabit. Styling a living room shelf. Styling the food on our plate. Styling the outfits we wear. She and I share those tidbits of style daily, via Instagram messaging, constant texting, and screenshots of images we admire.
Fast forward to my retirement. Well… not exactly. Retirement from going to a daily destination where I’m paid to work? Yes. But true retirement? Never! I’ve always had a side gig. I need a creative jam. Something that feeds my soul. Why couldn’t Grace and I combine our talents and embark on a creative journey together?
Broaching my husband and sons about entering the utterly saturated t-shirt/apparel market was daunting. Was there opportunity in the vastness of the internet? Sure. Would we get there, but end up “losing our shirt” (so to speak?) Maybe. Did we want to give it a try? Absolutely!
We didn't know what it was going to look like when we started. Grace came up with different designs, and I kept challenging them. “Mom! What do you want me to draw?” Grace was a little exasperated with my ambivalence. “We don’t know yet, babe. It will reveal itself when it happens.” We spoke about having the ideas come to us, instead of us chasing them. And then, one day, it was apparent. France: the complexity of the language, the simplicity of the laid-back pace, the shared admiration for the beauty. And Mère Fille was born.
