historical perspective

I just turned off comments for all blog posts prior to 2010…as anyone with a blog knows, sifting through the hundreds of spam comments for the real ones is, well, time consuming.

So it was a bit of a trip down memory lane.  I started this version of the blog about two years ago.  (I’ve had various blogs and a tumblr for perhaps six years, but they’ve gone through transformations, transportations, and the original one, sadly, was destroyed.  permanently.  by me. note to self-  always keep a backup in case you change your mind.  at that time, I intentionally deleted it.  goodbye forever 2004-2007.)

however, it’s also the one year anniversary, or roundabout there, of my shop on wharf street.

So, during the process of turning off comments for ~ 2 years worth of posts, I was reminded of the places I’ve been (mentally and physically) in the past couple of years.

to summarize in a few sentences the things I’ve mostly written about — (there is more to my life than these items, but I don’t write about everything :)

raw food: feel much better physically now that I’ve stopped eating raw.  I’m thinking that all raw for long periods of time doesn’t work for everyone.  still eat vegan.

business: sorting (continually) what sort of business I want to have.  Right now preferring something with low-geographic commitments.

organization: this is just a catch-all word I use for when I’d like to understand something in a concrete sequential kind of way:  i.e. take it apart, analyze the pieces, and put them into pretty boxes.  characterized by quizzes, spreadsheets, databases, and other forms of linear organization.  similar to languages, very calming. used with personality attributes, financial management, minimalism, thoughts & philosophies.  aka RULES

language: have grown to LOVE language learning.  it calms me down.

people: haven’t written much about this, but the past 5 years really have been about learning to be more discerning and discriminating regarding who I let into my life.

(ironically, I rarely write about fashion-  or even think about it.)

August 7, 2010 | brook
Posted in business, organization | Tagged | 3 Comments

reality tv

I’ve gotten quite a few emails in the past few weeks regarding Project Runway, including some from Bunim Murray, the entity responsible for casting the show.

Some background:  I have a retail store combined with my sewing studio on wharf street in Portland.  At least once a week, sometimes everyday, someone walks in for the first time and says “You should be on Project Runway”!  I always respond with the same, “well, thank you, but I’m not at all interested in doing that.”

Much of my work is about having a lifestyle that is integrated and deeply enjoyable.  Participating in a reality TV show sounds like HELL to me.  I don’t even like staying in other people’s houses as a guest; the thought of living with a bunch of strangers is painfully exhausting.  Couple that with sleep deprivation, lack of privacy, and, most likely, bad food + no exercise….I mean, I can think of worse situations, but certainly not one I’d seek out. Additionally, reality tv shows produce more notoriety than fame…and I feel they devalue the designers’ work.

So, Project Runway has been interested in casting someone from Maine.  Many people whom they contacted for suggestions gave my name…which I truly appreciate and find flattering!  But I’m not going to apply for the reasons above.  I appreciate my slow, quiet, thought-filled life.

April 22, 2010 | brook
Posted in art, materialism, press | Tagged | 2 Comments

paint

‘camoflague’ by liu bolin

these are fascinating.  no photoshop used by the artist.

November 19, 2009 | brook
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on goal making

Sometimes I think about making goals.

because, as you’ve probably heard, goal-making is a popular activity among successful people in the blogo-welt (I just couldn’t bring myself to end that word with ‘sphere’.)

When I was twenty I was deliberately making goals, focusing on future success & imagined idealized outcomes. By the time I was twenty-one I’d given up goal-making because I’d realized the risk of pursuing an unworthy target.  Unfortunately, it’s really difficult to determine ahead of time which goals might make us happy.

At that time, one of my goals had been to ‘be really thin’ (and actually, I think plenty of women can identify with this…)  -however, while I achieved that goal within months, I hadn’t really understood the emotional longterm impact self-starvation could have, and, of course, it certainly didn’t make me happy, relaxed, or carefree.

So I quit making goals, because I could clearly see the cause and effect.  Sometimes I’ll make short-term goals, such as finishing a certain project this week, or doing my finances, or things like that-  but I try to be careful about goals that are long-term or I might get attached to.

When I was a teenager I read a number of Julia Cameron’s books, starting with The Artist’s Way.  I remember some of the exercises in those books were creative visualization practices where one wrote detailed descriptions of an idealized, perfect life.

Perfect and ideal came to be watchwords for me.  Things I both sought and rejected, cyclically.  As I pursued them they made me unhappy, once I stopped the pursuit I forgot the pain they caused and started to chase them again.

Even though I know now that creative visualization is a powerful practice, it can be misused, against one-self, without even realizing until the results are in.

You might think…oh, she was just a young girl who wasn’t able to correctly identify worthy goals and that is what made her unhappy.
it’s true of course, but even now, almost ten years later, I don’t trust myself to set any goals that might have personal investment. And I doubt that given another sixty years to work on it I’d be able to set good goals either.

Because the entire practice of making goals is flawed.

by the way, the german word for goal is das Ziel. I prefer it to goal. Z-sounds are very nice.

For instance, almost every year, I make resolutions-  i.e. goals.  Mostly these days they are practical, like “take a vacation for at least a week” or “attend a german conversation group.”  Some I drop shortly after starting, because I’ve lost interest-  such as running 26 miles or getting better at photography.  But others are more complex-  such as ‘better balance my time between my two jobs.”  It’s the complex sort of statement like that which actually needs constant re-evaluation, and should never be stated in a goal-form.

Because, like everyone, the only thing I really want is to be happy.  Sometimes though, we set goals because they seem like the best way to learn happiness.  And then we pursue them, blind to whether on the way we are still on the right path.

As I thought about this last night a search led to this video by Eckhart Tolle on Enlightenment.  And he really says it all, so simply.  It’s all about the present moment.

Goals are exactly the opposite of the present moment.

May 7, 2009 | brook
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sewing calmly

sewing always goes better when it is done slowly. hence, the reminder signs (yes, in both German and English.)

February 25, 2009 | brook
Posted in studio | Tagged | Comments Off

threads

I woke up this morning and checked the site analytics, finding the large number of incoming visitors from the Threads Magazine article.  While I am pleasantly surprised that Threads decided to re-release the article with a link to my new brook there site, I am intrigued yet again by the type of comments it has created.

I did not know the article was being re-released until I saw the web traffic this morning.  I have skimmed the article comments, finding some of them so harsh I’d prefer not to read in to much detail.  Some commenters did note that the article was written in 2003.  I haven’t re-read the article, and no doubt would cringe at some of the things my 23 year old self said.

I find most odd the commenters who criticize my then-sewing techniques, since the fact I was approaching sewing differently was the ENTIRE POINT OF THE ARTICLE.  In 2003, I was an art student doing a project that related to fashion.  I wasn’t running a business.  my objective was to make beautiful, sculptural garments that people wanted to look at and touch. Sewing by hand, leaving raw edges and making interiors exterior were part of the overall aesthetic.

Moreover, the only person I had to fit was myself.  Fashion would never evolve if the concept of ‘fit’ remained stagnant.  a very skinny 23 year old looks chic and good in garments that fit unconventionally.

Learning to sew well is a technical skill; creating beautiful designs is a skill of intuition.

our society economically values the designer higher than the technician in every field (and the entrepreneur is valued higher than the designer.)  “economically values” means that the entrepreneur has the potential to earn more money than the designer or technician because the entrepreneur takes the most risks.

Threads is not solely a technical magazine, and to expect that it should only publish technical sewing articles is limiting to the magazine and its potential audience.  I read and re-read Threads all through my teen years, enjoying both the technical articles and the designer profiles.

February 11, 2009 | brook
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learning styles and problem solving

I had an interesting conversation with Anna this morning as I was showing the steps to insert a zipper for this pocket.  It’s a complicated, many stepped process:  the zipper is heavy duty, and the fabric is lighter.  The fabric has to be cut into in order to place the zipper within a fabric ‘rectangle’, and then the second piece from the front has to be attached…finally the pocket itself is attached.  Nonetheless, it’s a process with many steps, and one I wouldn’t attempt to document verbally, unless there were a variety of illustrations.  It’s the sort of process that one has to re-figure out every time it’s done.

many sewing tasks are like that actually:  there are too many steps to properly remember, and they take place in such a small three-dimensional space with many layers and folds, that one has to rely on basic problem-solving skills in order to re-engineer the construction.  (Especially, as in our case, this is not a production process with many iterations…I’ve probably done 6 of these zippers in the past year…not many in sewing terms.)

it reminded me of my father’s approach to solving problems in his work-  which have been typically mathematical, geometric, and relate in some way to 3-d space as well.  He is fond of doing simple math problems in his head, and relies on memorizing a very few formulae and basic numbers,  re-developing each and every time the non-core concepts from the core.  For instance, he would memorize pi (to the 4th decimal place) and a couple formulas relating to spheres and circles, as well as the number of feet in a mile-  and that would be enough for every problem he needed to understand in the last 30-odd years.

Anna and I started talking about how we learn based on that pocket.  I’ve always believed I could learn anything from reading (apart from, perhaps, rock climbing and german, though I tried.) And truthfully, reading has served me very well: it taught me more than school or college ever did.

However, there are problems one encounters where even knowing what question is the right one to ask next is unclear.  When I started to learn web-programming, it was through back-figuring other examples in html, css, javascript, or php.  I’ve yet to read a book on the stuff, though I own a couple. But at points I’d be stumped, and know that if I could use english to describe my problem to a person, it would become clear immediately, but using keywords in google would do nothing-  as I didn’t yet know which question to ask.

This is perhaps because I don’t have an actual interest in knowing web programming; (unlike sewing) the websites I make are merely a means to an end– and knowing extraneous knowledge about it would be too time consuming. When I was seriously learning about sewing as a teen, I was so in love with the skill set I was voracious to know everything about it, regardless of immediate utility.

Knowing that I’ve relied on reading to teach myself almost anything, I’ve somewhat recently been thinking about how people learn who can’t, for what ever reason, use reading the same way.

I’ve had two close relationships with individuals who, as children, couldn’t read in a practical sense (dyslexia or learning disabilities.)  Both people are very smart.  yet both developed perspectives on the world that are foreign to me, in a very sense that is both intangible and difficult to pin down.  It’s perhaps similar to those stories one hears about perception: certain indiginous cultures perceive optical illusions differently than westernized cultures. Not being able to read as a child obviously requires the brain to develop atypical problem solving skills, and these might often lead to different results, and in the non-concrete space, very different interpretations of the world around them.

I’m going to be looking for learning styles tests next.

January 9, 2009 | brook
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thoughts on travel

1. really don’t think TSA special screening is random, despite the little chat they give you before the patdown.  I’ve only been selected twice in my life, both times I had changed my ticket outside of security without 90 minutes of departure.  (one of which was yesterday.)  Standing in line to board the plane, I started looking at other people’s tickets-  the specially screened ones are stamped with red ink all over…everyone else in line who had one spoke with accents indicating they were foreign-born.

2. rental cars in DC and St. Louis come with window scrapers, but ones in Boston during a storm they don’t.

3. XM radio is really, really cool and what I want for Christmas.

December 20, 2008 | brook
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simple message

a common observation is that most successful small businesses have a very limited range of products.

I’m not going to discuss services.

There are many reasons to limit one’s products:
1. cost of production is lower through higher volumes
2. NRE (non-recoverable engineering) is greatly reduced over the life-cycle of the company, and can be spread across the greater volume.
3. marketing is simpler: the brand message is straightforward and requires little transformation across the course of a year.
4. sales are simpler: if the business sells through salespeople or reps, the pitch is short and sweet and the ordering process is singular. If the business sells direct or through a website, maintenance and updating are less intensive.
5. accounting is simpler. one or few product types, and less ‘fuzzy’ stuff like NRE means that numbers are based on more concrete knowledge.

I’m sure there are other reasons, but those are the big ones.

As the designer for a very small business, I observe this trend frequently in the fashion world. Businesses thrive (or appear to) when they limit their product line, do it really well, and spend most of their effort on brand and sales.

unfortunately (or fortunately?), as a designer, this limiting approach is boring. The fun part of work is making new stuff.

there is a parallel aesthetic choice to simplicity. I have deliberately simplified my aesthetic over the past ten years, and the evolution of brook there, in order to allow for reproducibility and quicker customer understanding. (you can check out my earlier, visually dense, style on my flickr page: years 2001-2004)

To the outsider, it may appear that a small company like ours makes only one product:  clothes.  And while true, we make a wide range within that category: women’s dresses, shirts, coats, hoodies, skirts, yoga, lingerie; men’s shirts and tshirts. Each new pattern costs between $500 and $1000 to develop- labor costs- and the cost of that pattern, plus the subsequent samples, is spread across the garments that are actually produced for sale.  Every new style also requires photos, a web page, space on the order form…etc.

One approach to simplification we have taken is minimizing the fabric styles.  Sourcing only a few types of fabrics, and adding detail through dying and recycled trims.

however, I am frequently wondering about how to walk the line between creative output (which works best in plurality) and the simplified message that makes for an easier sale.

I haven’t figured it out yet.

November 22, 2008 | brook
Posted in organization | Tagged | Comments Off

—————————————–

sewing can be a form of active meditation.  once you know what you’re doing-  which people who sew professionally do know most of the time-  the tasks are repetitive and simple, small steps, less complicated or strenuous than cleaning a kitchen. they require visual and tactile attention but not mental attention.  it’s the perfect opportunity to either be present, mindful, or think other interesting things.

November 15, 2008 | brook
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