The Beginning of The Essence of You!

Well, I'm sitting here trying to figure out what I'm supposed to put into this blog and why someone, anyone would want to read it. I figured the best way to start is to start from the beginning. What lead me to create The Essence Of You!

I was born and raised in New York all my life until recent years. I've always had the knack of creating things with my hands. If it came into my head, I would find someway of creating it by hand. That was true with making clothes, creating unique, one of a kind hats, sunglasses bags, what have you. Either I altered what I had, or I created the item from beginning to end. My high school teacher directed my creative energy toward fashion. She taught me to sketch and to use a sewing machine and before you know it, I got pretty good. My teacher entered me into school contest were I came in 2nd and 3rd place. That gave me the confidence in my senior year to enter our schools fashion show. Now, for me, that was big. I was very quite in school and shied away from a lot of attention. I was always very self conscious of my looks, which back then was not in fashion (I'll save that story for another day).

Any way, I entered this fashion show and not only did I sew a few garments for the show, but I also decided to model them myself. In my four years in high school, the day I remember most was the response I got when I entered the stage. I couldn't see in front of me due to the spot lights, but I remember people, my school mates, screaming my name and cheering me on. Now, my family was also in the audience, but the calls came from both my family and people that I didn't even know knew me. After the show, I remember everyone walking up to me and congratulating me on a wonderful show. It made me feel really good and confident about my abilities to create.

It took me a few years after high school before I decided to go to college. In the meantime, after high school, I worked retail. I started as a sale person, and worked my way up to co-manager before I decided it was time to give college a try. The obvious school of choice for me was the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT). I went to school in the evenings and majored in Fashion Buying and Merchandising . While there I took up Jewelry Design as an elective and fell in love with the process. To be able to transform metal into a beautiful work of wearable art was (and still is) amazing to me. I began to create Sterling Silver jewelry for myself like bracelets, earrings, necklaces, things that I thought was primitive in design, but had my school mates asking if they could buy them from me. That's when my entrepreneur spirit started to kick in.

(Stay tune for more of how it all began. In the meantime, if you want to see some of my work, you can go to my website @ http://www.theessenceofu.com).