Jasmine: [00:00:00] Hey guys, welcome back to my channel. my name is Jasmine and you are watching Make Good Fashion. This is my first episode of Make Good Fashion and I'm super excited because I have been wanting to do a podcast for so long, but I just, I don't know. I've been procrastinating. I've been Wanting to get things perfectly and I have just decided I'm just gonna do it like it doesn't need to be perfect I'm just gonna start this podcast and it is what it is.
We'll get better with time and just keep improving so for this first episode I thought that I would just share a little bit about my fashion story and how I got my start in the fashion industry and Where I am now so after I graduated high school, I went to FIDM, which is a fashion school in Los Angeles, the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising.
And I went there knowing that I always wanted to start my own clothing company. I didn't really [00:01:00] know what that concept would look like at the time. I was super into street wear and so different than I am now. And so it's just so funny to see how things have evolved, but after I left FIDM, I started working in the industry, started getting some internships and all of that, and then I started working for a company called Joyrich.
Now Joyrich was a super cool Japanese, like, streetwear brand that was so fun to work with. And I started as a sales associate at their retail stores and then became a sales assistant at Joyrich. for their wholesale division for corporate and worked my way up to sales manager and working there was like the time of my life.
It was the perfect place to work in your twenties at the time I was one of the youngest working in their corporate offices too. And the youngest sales manager that I think that they've had. And it was just such an exciting journey. That job allowed me to go to Paris two times a year and work Paris fashion week in the showrooms.
I traveled all around the [00:02:00] US, I went to London to curate a pop up shop in Selfridges, the iconic department store. And so I've just had a wild ride there. But there was a point in my journey there where I no longer wanted to be in the fashion industry in that way. I still had a love for fashion.
I still wanted to. To be in it, but it felt like my world and the fashion world were just like not meshing I had really started to change around that time and I had rededicated my life to my Christian faith and just really got serious about My faith and who I wanted to be and the lifestyle that I was living working in the industry and the things that I was exposed to and all of that stuff and It didn't mesh with where I was trying to go.
And so I took a leap of faith and I left my job. And I began working for [00:03:00] a brand called Style Stalker. And after that, I just took the leap and started my own business. So for my business, I really wanted to create a concept that was impactful. That was more than just the fashion. I felt like There came a point while I was working in the industry where everything just seemed so vain and so useless and so just like wasteful.
It was just like we were machines, you know, pumping out designs every season, trying to stay on trend, all these things. And I wanted to do things my way. And so I started this brand and the whole concept was really inspired by my faith and where I was at at the time. I wanted to dress more modestly, but all the brands that existed on the market at that time were kind of felt really restrictive and kind of legalistic.
And I wanted to do so in a way that wasn't legalistic, but was more forward and still allowed me to feel feminine and beautiful and all of that stuff. And so I started this brand with that concept and also a [00:04:00] concept to just ethically produce everything and ethically source our materials. And also something that would be able to give back.
And so at the time I was doing a lot of mission work specifically in Thailand with an organization called Life Impact International. And so I really wanted to, to mesh those two worlds of the fashion and the, the work that I was doing on the mission field. And so I decided that the brand would give back.
To that organization And so for the last few years I have been running this business and it's just been such a wild ride you guys I've been able to accomplish and do things that I never thought were possible for me I made the Forbes 30 under 30 list at 29 years old, which honestly you guys, I thought it was a scam,
I was like, there is no way I made this list. And I go on the Forbes website and I see my picture and I'm like, oh, I really made this list. From things like that to being stocked in some of my [00:05:00] dream retail stores, one being Madewell. I always loved shopping at Madewell and always imagine that one day that my clothes would be available on Madewell and.
I reached that point and the thing that was amazing about it was that I was able to do this and keep the concept that was so counter-cultural and have this impact and still be able to, to stand on the level where I would be able to , be stocked in these stores and be covered and featured in the press and featured in Harper's Bizarre and Forbes and and style and all these things.
And so, My journey in fashion has been truly just a dream. It's been hard. I'm not gonna lie. Fashion is hard. If anyone tells you any different than they're lying, it's been a hard journey, but so rewarding to just see the fruits of what God did through this dream that he's given me.
And so it's just been amazing. But last year I came to [00:06:00] this point. That I never thought I would come to. I hit this fork in the road. I remember I had went to this meeting at this showroom. That was, that I was looking to have the brand stocked in. And basically when you're in a fashion showroom, a fashion sales showroom, they represent the brand and they will distribute your brand to different retailers.
And we had been handling wholesale in house up until this point. And it was a time where... I really had to think about expansion and about where the company would go at this point. And so I met with the showroom and it went well and they were really interested in stocking the brand. But I remember asking the showroom director about another brand that had been stocked there previously that was no longer a part of the showroom.
She began to explain to me that that the founder of that brand Began to have children and began to, you know, became a mom and [00:07:00] wanted to slow down and just not be in the grind of fashion anymore and Have a slower lifestyle and it really hit me that I had come to the same place in my life no, I'm not a mom.
I'm not married. I don't have a family Or a family of my own I should say However, I've come to a place in my life where I want to go slow. At the same time, I had began consulting brands and startups and I had gained such a passion and a love for it to be able to, to help people to get to where I was or to help people start off or to avoid the mistakes that I made in the beginning.
And this truly just lit me up and really set a spark in me. And I realized that I'd rather be doing that and rather slow down than continue to put so much into my business or at the level I had been at the time. You know, we had come to a place where we had done [00:08:00] six figures in one month. And with that, it requires so much from you and it was amazing, but I just came to a point where I realized that I wanted to slow down.
I needed to slow down. And so that's where the idea for Make Good Fashion came about, because I wanted to be able to tell these stories, I wanted to be able to help other people, I wanted to be able to inspire people to kind of do what I was able to do, and create impact in fashion, and to make a difference, and to pass on the torch to others,
so that I could help people to get to that place and to do fashion in a way that was purpose driven. And so I'm just so excited for this, for make, make good fashion for a podcast, for all the things that are gonna be fruit of this journey to continue to help people on their journey, to continue to inspire and to do so in a way that's fitting for my lifestyle.
And my life in this point And so [00:09:00] I hope that you guys are going to be so inspired by this podcast. We have so many amazing things coming up Throughout my 13 years in the fashion industry, you would imagine that I have accumulated a lot of friendship, I have met a lot of amazing people and I'm bringing all my friends and all my industry people into this space to share their stories and to inspire and to, encourage other people who are on this journey as well. You're gonna want to tune in every single Friday. I'm gonna drop a new episode They're gonna range from interviews to telling stories of my own experience my failures I want to be as transparent and open as possible and I want to inspire you to make good fashion I want to inspire you to pursue your dreams.
So I thank you so much for listening to this podcast and to just hear some of my story. And I hope that this podcast brings you so much value and that we've become great friends from this. So please make sure to subscribe to this podcast[00:10:00] to leave some comments. Leave some love .
I'm so excited to get to hear more about your journey and to share more about mine as well
