Creativity is a unique bird.  Having worked in the finance industry for nearly 15 years, creativity in my life has been at the far, blurry edges of my focus, especially since creativity with numbers can land you in a cushy, minimum security jail cell for eighteen to twenty four months.  Hey, Martha.

So when I began to secretly day dream about designing my own line of luxury outerwear, my foremost concern was “What if I only have one good idea?”

But, as so many others have discovered before me, it turns out creativity is self propagating : it builds upon itself almost automatically.  It reminds me of those toy kaleidoscopes we had when we were young (read : millennial) : as you turn it in your hands, the pictures morph and change into something new and different with every new angle, always unique, always giving you something new to see with each turn. 

For me, coming up with a design for a coat is a similar feeling.  Once I begin running my hands over fabric swatches and begin to visualize the colors and cut and movement of each potential jacket, various designs pop into my head, and I mentally shuffle through them one after the other.  

As I moved further into the design process for Season 1, researching American clothing manufacturers, sourcing fabrics, and beginning to see my ideas come to fruition, it turned out limiting myself to five core styles for my first season would be intensely difficult.  It was like Sophie’s choice: how can I commit to five core pieces when I have thirty floating around in my head?  Comparing my design culling process to picking between my children might be a little hyperbolic, but you get the picture… it was difficult.

There was the Lou Trench who started it all and refused to be left out.  She can be a real bossy b****.  And the Amelia bomber who was my most colorful and trendy design.  How could I let her go?  And on and on.  The only style who did not make the cut was a shacket style I drew and re-drew and could not land on a design which was both elegant and modern enough to satisfy the Martindale brand aesthetic.  Plus, I had found some exceptional shacket options from conscientious brands like Agolde.

I decided to leave the shackets to my fellow professionals and narrowed down Martindale Fall/Winter 2024 to five core styles : the trench coat with a twist, the colorful bomber, the elegant tuxedo coat, the warm and classic shawl collar coat, and the daring cape coat.  It was an elevated and cohesive outerwear capsule for my first foray into luxury outwear, and I was happy with the selections.

“But Elise, you have six styles in F/W 2024?”  Ah yes, my canny reader, I cannot pull the luxurious Australian wool over your eyes.  Here’s the story behind Maggie (dropping 9/6!), the glen plaid trench coat who was begging to be made : One late, late night after doom scrolling through fabric mills and vendors websites for hours, I discovered 153 yards of Balenciaga deadstock wool in a beautiful black and white glen plaid with a fine blue thread running through the pattern to make it pop.

(For those of you who do not know what deadstock is, think of it as orphaned fabric, which is searching for a comfortable and stylish place to call home.  When large luxury designers order fabric, they may order 100,000 yards from an Italian fabric mill for an upcoming season.  This is then used to create 30,000 units of a style, but there are always five, ten, perhaps 50 yards left over which quantities are too small to be economical for the sewing room to combine and use.  Instead, it becomes more cost efficient to bundle those orphaned yards up into one package and sell them at a discount.  Luxury wool plaid at a discount?  Yes, please.  Using deadstock fabric keeps it out of the trash heap and is a eco-conscious way of providing fabric with a new life.  However, the down side is I cannot re-order more of the fabric.  This is a one-time opportunity, so the Maggie is a limited quantity offering.  Once she’s gone, she’s never coming back, and to answer your question : yes, she’s a bit of a diva.)

Back to my late night doom scrolling : my mouth began to water as I looked through the specs of the fabric.

Couture quality fabric? Check

100% wool? Check

Bomb ass colors and pattern? Check

Enough fabric to warrant a new pattern run (more on this later)? Check! (but just barely)

I had just won the deadstock fabric lottery!  Add to cart.  Purchase.  Gulp at the cost of shipping but push the guilt aside and move ahead.  And so began my journey to create our first and limited quantity plaid offering : the Maggie Trench.  She is stylish and chic and only here for a short amount of time.  Maggie has taught me that sometimes you simply need to be open to creativity and she will come your way and wrapped in beautiful Italian wool.

Circling back to the creative muse : so much in our lives is bound by limitations: time, energy, money; it’s reassuring to find something which stretches and grows as we use it.  I would encourage you to find a creative outlet in your life.  It can be anything: painting, board game creation (Shout out to all my fellow nerds.  I see you.), gardening, music, drawing, designing clothing (back off), or recreating Star Wars scenes in your mom’s basement (double shout out).  Find something that tickles your fancy, and begin to explore the expressive powers of your mind.  It will be rewarding; I promise.  

“You can’t use up creativity.  The more you use, the more you have.” – Maya Angelou

Bisous,

Elise