Paying Homage to the Inspiration

While we had been to Palm Springs before, we hadn’t spent much time walking into any stores so this time we put more effort into that, especially because we were spending the night. And that meant stopping at the Trina Turk flagship store. We have been to other stores, particularly two that are now shuttered (Manhattan Beach and South Pasadena), but we hadn’t been the the flagship store.

Many people don’t know that Trina Turk is a big inspiration behind Chelle Summer. I fell in love with Trina’s designs from the beginning. While I didn’t realize it, what I really fell in love with were the colors and the patterns. In fact, when Greg and I married, she had towels and sheets at Macys, too, and we registered for those. I am happy to report that if you come stay at my house, you are most likely to sleep between Trina sheets and dry off after a bathing with a Trina towel. But my closet is filled with dresses and I wore a lot of her swimwear before I was making my own.

Most people think I am heavily influenced by Kate Spade and I am, to a point, but Trina is a bigger inspiration for me, probably because of the California cool that her designs exude. I like to think of Chelle Summer as a bit Trina, a bit Kate, and a sprinkle of Lilly Pulitzer.

It was in this process of admiring her things that I began to come up with my own ideas. Certain styles of clothing didn’t always work for me and I had other ideas for prints. As my own work as continues to evolve, I can see where the inspiration started, but now it’s all mine and continues to move forward that way.

Stopping in the Palm Springs store was of acknowledging how far I have come with Chelle Summer. And while I still have a long way to go where I want it to be, it’s always good to reflect on where we’ve come from.

Thank you, Trina, for all the inspiration. I wouldn’t be where I am without it.

Creative Freedom

I am filled with inspiration. There is more that I want to do than there is time for. And yet there is one part of me that lacks, like there is a disconnect between my head and what I actually produce– drawing.

I grew up drawing all the time. Mom made sure that Denise and I always had plenty of paper- the notepads my medical doctor grandfather received from drug companies and later piles of dot matrix computer paper Karen brought home from college– and markers and crayons. It seemed like almost yearly we received new markers for Christmas and after school ended in June, our leftover crayons ended up in one big bag, a bag I believe Karen still has.

In school, even as I grew older, I doodled a lot. Probably in suicide prevention meetings and my doctoral classes, too, but I don’t have the notes to prove that.

And yet now I find that even though I have good intentions about drawing, I easily push it aside for other things I feel I need to do. The disconnect seems to have more to do with what I allow myself to do in a day, that freedom not just to express myself, but to spend the time doing something that always made me deliriously happy.

One of my goals for this year to get over that hump especially since reading something that graphic artist Milton Glaser (who died a few months ago) said about how we have gotten away from our imaginations and we allow technology to be our creative outlet. I don’t want to color in someone else’s lines either, I want to color in within the ones I have drawn (if I even have lines on my page!).

Apparently, Glaser was known for sketching various aspects of life– landscapes, meals. It’s also a diary of sorts and one I hope that I can not just find the time to do this year, but make it a new way of documenting life and what inspires me.

The Road to Color

I probably have the least amount of black in my wardrobe than anyone I know. I believe black is a classic color and I've worn quite a bit of it in my time, but in recent years I've come to believe that people wear black mostly because they want to blend in, not be seen. It's like becoming part of the paneling on a wall– people might wear black because they don't want anyone to see them at the gym. It's better to blend into the crowd then stick out (not such a good idea if you're running in the dark though).

For me, however, while there are a few black dresses in my closet and I own black tennis skirts, black leggings, and some long-sleeved black tops, you won't see me reaching for black too often if I have something else to choose from. More than likely, I'm using black with a print, like a black tank top and printed skirt.

I didn't realize that I had made a color shift until I was in the midst of my suicide and grief speaking career and people began to ask me, "With all that you've been through, how can you wear such bright colors?"

I actually hadn't thought about it. When I started speaking I wore a lot of navy blue and black. In one national television appearance I wore...gray. When I saw the segment I wondered what I had been thinking: I blended right in with the set. Not much better than wearing black.

At first I told people it was because I didn't view myself as someone whose life was filled with loss and that I had always worn bright, funky clothes. But in thinking about it, I reached back further into my life and realized it went back to a black bathing suit.

I was going into eighth grade and I needed a new swimsuit. A good friend had a black one piece and that's what I wanted yet when I told my mom at the store, she squashed me on it. 

"You're too young to wear black," she said, me having no idea what she meant.

I ended up with a navy suit with vertical black stripes, but I believe being told I was too young to wear black all those years ago is still influencing me today. No no no- not that I am too young to wear black now!– but it forced me to look beyond black and at other colors available to me. By not letting me wear black, what my mom really did was say, "You have many other colors to pick from."

And that's more than evident in my life today. Thank you, Mom.