Garments of Light

Coco Chanel said: "Look for the woman in the dress. Without the woman, there is no dress".

Monah Li said: "I realized that on young women I notice the dress first. With the older women, I notice the personality first and the dress second".

My friend Lisa said: "I want to dress body-conscious, but not self-conscious".

This is bigger than age, or customer profile. It's about what I can imagine. The clothes that I create let the soul show through. The human body is not hermetically sealed - the skin is a veil, a garment of light, which contains our spirit. The clothes I design are meant to be another layer of skin, another veil that expresses and reveals who we are.

I am driven by the belief that the right garment can save us. Call it dress-as-redemption, fashion-as-platonic ideal. In a kind of style-based magical thinking, I know in my heart that a garment transforms me -- the shame-crazed, former bulimic and drug-addicted insecure and approval-haunted younger women, into the shining, beautiful creature the world has at times conspired to render ugly.

Now, that I am not consumed with envy and regret about not being 6 feet tall with perfect symmetric features, pneumatic boobs and long lashes, I can use my energy to empower and inspire other women with my designs that express the women inside the dress.

My next enterprise is to create a store that makes it possible for us to find and purchase those clothes. Whenever I walk into 'Forever 21', I find myself in a rush, a high, a drunkenness, that comes from the experience of so many choices, the easiness of buying garments that are cheap enough to shut down my inner critic. "It's not an investment. I'll just buy it and to hell with it if it falls apart after two washes"

I see other women my age in the stores, excited, but not convinced. The clothes are not exactly right for us, but close. So, we all compromise on what we really want.

I have a vision for a department store where the salespeople are in our age group, creatively dressed and helpful, without the intimidation and stuffiness of a Beverly Hills store. Not the matronly square-ness of Chico's or the art-fair ghetto of the now defunct Harari. And defiantly not the "I am too old to be hip" Talbot's or St. Johns.

I will make this happen, and I will need and use all the help I can get.

What I don't have yet is a name for this store/community center. Any suggestions?