betseyville

Gramma Dorothy has requested that I post about my new wonderful job at Betsey because, as she reminded me, she's not the only one who reads my blog. ...which I do forget sometimes. So! I work at Betsey Johnson now, who has always been one of my all time favorite fashion designers. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Betsey, she is known for punky, wacky, vintage inspired clothing. If you look at styles that she created thirty years ago, and compare them to her most recent shows, you wouldn't really be able to tell a difference. I've put some images from style.com's archive of her most recent shows on here. I think that it's easy to see why I love her stuff. Also, she is a wonderful person. I abosulety adore her and her business partner, Chantal. They are both genuinely kind, exuberant, firm but fun businesswomen; they have quickly become my fashion idols for when I have my own business.

I fit into Betsey as one of the new "technical desginers." Which is a broad-reaching term here. What I actually do is keep the charts and boards that we refer to up to date. Every day things are changing--this is shortened; this is going to a different factory; this is going to have pink contrast trim; this style number is changing; this fabrication is changing--and everyone needs to know about it. Besides that, I sort of fill in everywhere. For instance, recently I have fixed the sewing machine, I made the collars smaller on some samples we got in, I sketched some garments we were missing sketches for, I trooped through the garment district to find rubber buttons (close to impossible!), and was consulted on the creation of an intranet line sheet publishing website (in which I made *very* clear that I am anything but a webmaster!).

This is Betsey and her granddaughter:

And this is some of her stuff: