Family, I can not tell you how excited I am to share this fantastic news with you!!! I want to use today's blog to explain to you how this opportunity came about so go grab your tea or coffee and tune in...
On March 23rd of this year, I received a DM from a program coordinator. She proceeds to tell me that she saw my previous fall collection (Melanated Masterpieces 2021) and thought that I would be great for their SHEIN X designer program to also design a collection for them for the fall of this year. I have to put a pause here and give a special shout-out to my social media manager Phelicia Hardy with Connecting the Dots Branding for all of my posts, website design, and the dreaded hashtags that she so diligently put together, this is how the program coordinator found my runway post! So of course, I was skeptical of her, the program, and anything else that comes to my DM. I told her thank you and please send me an email so that I could read the details. I thought to myself: 'If she asks me for any sort of donation, it's a total scam.' Well to my surprise, no money was needed on my end from SHEIN, it was well written, very professional, in a slide show sort of presentation with all the details included from start to finish.
This is where prayer came into play...I was nervous, anxious, and sweaty, and finally went to sleep after reading the presentation and contract several times. God woke me up to re-read the contract early the next morning and He gave me peace about this opportunity so I proceeded to forward it to my team, signed it, and proceeded to get started.
I did not know what I was in for initially. One of the biggest requirements was to submit the designs in a software known as CAD, no actual stitching was needed on my end. This was a new concept for me because I can not draw at all and I make all of my samples. I began to search Fiverr for contract CAD designers and stumbled across Tanya Blanding. She had over 25+ years of experience in CAD software design and became my mentor in everything design. She read over the contract for the correct guidelines as it relates to the sketches. She not only brought my designs to life, but she also contracted out my prints for design and scale, taught me about Pantone; a color placement software and so much more. It was definitely a divine setup!
Here are a few examples of pictures I sent Tanya to help explain what I wanted within the new collection. We will certainly be working together in the near future as I learn more about this digital fashion design arena!
Once each tech pack was summited for each look and approved (this took months because you must be meticulous about every detail down to the zipper and button colors), I was assigned a sample maker who was responsible for making my digital designs come to life in the SHEIN workshop. Since we are in a totally different time zone (SHEIN is located in China), they would work on the designs during the night, my time and I would wake up to revisions in the morning for approval. I found this process very efficient! As soon as I approved a design, no more revisions would be made and it would immediately go into bulk production.
All of the looks were launched on October 10th here in the United States, however, the suit found to the left is still in production so look out for this one, it will be dropping very soon!
At the time I ordered my collection many of the pieces are close to being sold out!!! They will restock the items in a few weeks so snag your favorite pieces now here: http://m.shein.com/us/designer/10561?ref=us&rep=dir&ret=mus
Thank you all for your support as we continue to climb up this design ladder!!!
