I built HALE ATELIER on a cutting table in a studio apartment with a six-month-old asleep in a bassinet three feet away.
People don’t know that. The press version is cleaner “self-funded designer launches minimalist label, gains cult following, secures first stockist within eighteen months.” What that sentence doesn’t include is the part where I hand-stitched samples at 2 AM with milk stains on my shirt, or the part where I cried in a fabric store because I couldn’t afford the lining I needed and had to use something cheaper that I knew would pill, or the part where my first fashion show was six looks in a borrowed gallery and I almost canceled because Mia had a fever and I had no one to call.
I had no one to call for a long time.
I have people now. A team. A studio in the Garment Distric
