I did not know that when I set out to create a brand with meaning, I would have to really live through it. If I had the slightest inkling of what lay ahead of me, I don’t think I would have ever been able to start.

This is a story about finding inspiration, finding my creative voice, and learning to trust myself when I had no idea what came next.

I was just a fashion designer with years of desire to create something of my own. To create love and joy with great taste. Believe me when I say, I did not know my own design language. Years of college submissions, then buyer demands and deadlines, the ever-evolving runway- I was always designing, but to meet goals. So when I stepped out of corporate to start this journey, I followed all the protocols, but I couldn’t visualise any new designs in my head. I wanted to put my creative POV in the world, but what was it? Had no idea, except for the fact that I wanted to surprise people.

I have always loved making people feel something- happy, loved, cared for. If they are avoiding something, then definitely that too. So I wanted to make clothes that felt like gifts, but very fashion and very design.

But I still couldn’t visualise these said clothes.

Finding Inspiration When You Feel Lost

Slowly, life isolated me from everything that was mine- my routines, safety, trust, hope, direction, love, confidence. Obviously, money became different after I had no salary day to celebrate. Nothing made sense and life left me feeling empty.

Looks like God needed his canvas wiped clean, perhaps. I shall like to go here with another pun and say that he then rubbed the canvas with my a**? Don’t worry, I’m over it now (or used to his ways), that’s why I can joke about it.

I may have looked decent to the human eye, but on the inside, it felt like I was alone walking into an infinite storm. I felt weak, incapable, wrong, useless, frozen. So much was happening on the inside, but nothing was moving on the outside. Days and months of this, where it would take so much energy and courage to create results that needed more results to result in one tangible thing.

And sitting in this situation, I was looking for the meaning of Goodmess- which actually is the sibling of the “hot mess” of Hollywood rom-coms. You know how the main characters always had some kind of idiosyncrasies and somehow that’s what somebody fell in love with? Perfection has never been fallen for. It is the imperfect that seems so perfectly perfect to the right pair of eyes.

That’s how I see you, the Goodmess customer and probably myself too.

“Hot mess” felt a little too cringe and did not feel like me. Soon enough, I found a name that struck all the right chords in me. Anyway, I had the name. I was looking for the meaning, because somehow this rom-com source wasn’t fulfilling me. And I felt like I had surely forgotten how to sketch, design, what fabrics feel like, and that some million trends were being dropped per season and I’d never be able to catch up to them. I was also looking for my maiden collection’s theme. You can now read all about it here.

Trust me, fossils have been discovered sooner than “inspiration”. How was I to find something that could convey everything to the world and carry an unknown but good aesthetic taste?

I Turned Out to Be My Inspiration

One day, while being on a digital cleaning spree, I found a note that I had written in probably the first few days of college. And maybe over the years, I had kept adding to it. It was the first (and only) time I was living outside of Delhi, studying with people from all over the country. I had felt very dis-balanced culturally, and that is what I had written about. Reading it after so many years had made me smile. 

I felt understood, and I loved that. And I felt that there might be others who carried this feeling in their hearts, and that excited me. Like I would be finding my people. So, my cultural ambiguity arose something in me, and the likelihood of this being a shared feeling made sense to me. I started thinking of reasons for such ambiguity to arise within the Indian diaspora.

I had finally found a creative voice that was mine. I could deep-dive into it and express it, and it was unique. Cultures have been spoken about in India as many times as a boy has been named Akash, but this was/is still an alien phenomenon.

I turned out to be my inspiration!

And I guess we all unconsciously leave breadcrumbs to find our way back to the best home — ourselves. Maybe we just forget to look behind/ within and hope for directions from everyone else.

The Breadcrumbs Back to Myself

So now, every time life isolates me, because that is apparently the upgradation pattern, I don’t freak out (maybe a little bit). I do feel it. I allow myself to feel bad, but I don’t break down and halt. I remind myself that I can stay with myself till the next step reveals itself. And breadcrumbs are how I stay with myself. Every time I feel something, I don’t leave myself, no matter how scary it gets. This creates a memory in my system, which, repeated every time, soon becomes a very useful habit.

So the next time, or even if now you are feeling something or everything- big, small, good, bad- allow yourself to feel it. It passes. Stay with yourself and go with the flow.

Every time I sit through a tough feeling (it is tough only until you become capable of sitting with it, then it is just a feeling), I discover or cultivate its better/useful counterpart in myself.

When I feel insecure in a room full of people, I don’t escape that feeling. I register it and I have a conversation with myself. I remind myself why I am in this room, how I deserve to be in this room. Even if someone might have what I want, that doesn’t mean I automatically put myself on a lower level than them. I know what I want, and I am doing my honest best for it. And tomorrow’s best will be different from yesterday’s- so I try not to beat myself up for that. No matter what happens, I don’t leave myself. And I have been doing this for months now. Doesn’t mean I don’t feel insecure now- maybe not in the rooms I frequent, but in new ones, I could.

But because I know I can handle myself, I sign up for new meaningful opportunities more now. And that’s how you grow with the flow. (Coincidentally, I’ve had this poster since the first Goodmess office- I myself got it 🙂 I guess this Gretel leaves some different kind of breadcrumbs. Funny.)