What If I Stop Leaving?

The Pull of Simplicity

I could spend weeks, honestly months, on a beach in another country wearing the same bathing suit every day and be completely content. There’s something about that level of simplicity that I love. My entire life can fit into a suitcase, there are fewer decisions to make, and I rarely miss all of the things I thought I needed when I was surrounded by them.

Then I come back to New York and almost immediately remember another version of myself. I want the clothes, the energy, the beautiful stores and the constant movement. I start looking at how things were made, thinking about the brands behind them and noticing all of the little details I’ve spent years training myself to notice. More than anything, I want to be back around people who are building things, especially in fashion.

I’ve spent a lot of time stepping outside of the industry and working behind the scenes to help other visionaries build their businesses, but somehow I keep finding my way back to fashion. I think part of that is because what I’ve always loved about this industry goes far beyond the clothes themselves. I love seeing a vision and being able to recognize what’s standing between where it is now and where it could be.

Usually, the person with the vision shouldn’t be spending their entire day thinking about production timelines, broken systems, operational gaps or why something that should be relatively simple has somehow become incredibly complicated. Those are the problems I genuinely enjoy solving. Give me the messy backend of a beautiful brand and let me figure out why it isn’t working the way it should.

There’s definitely some irony in being equally drawn to a life where I need almost nothing and an industry built around beautiful things, but I’m starting to realize those parts of me don’t actually contradict each other. I can love the simplicity of disappearing somewhere with one suitcase and still come back to New York excited by fashion, creativity and complicated problems that need to be solved. Maybe I was never supposed to choose between the two.