The beginning of August is as quiet as my year gets. Italy is fully closed, which means no sweaters, no yarns and no new holiday novelty development. My pattern maker and my flat photographer are on vacation, aka no new development, no production starting and no new photography on the website. When I started MM, I thought that meant I got these two weeks for vacation as well! While I learned that lesson the hard way (yikes!), it’s really made me appreciate where I was six years ago in August.

Where I Was in August 2018

In August 2018, I had ten pieces of clothing shot, a look book shopped around to editors and a website in development (had yet to learn how to even spell Shopify). I had no idea how many orders I was going to get on launch day, November First, and even less of a plan how I was going to produce them for a profit every season, every year. Oh boy.

The Path I Was Supposed to Take

I hail from the Midwest, where (as we millennials were told) you go to college to study a major, get a great internship, then after graduation, find a job in that field. And that’s the way the world works. It’s what everyone in my family did. Well, that’s exactly what I did as well. I followed every step in my industry like the diligent Midwesterner I am. I showed up to Oscar de la Renta with a smile on my face and assumed everyone got their job the same way I did (endless networking because of a wedding I worked on at Cheree Berry Paper). When a huge direct to consumer boom lined up with a long stretch at my job I was ready to end, I took a chance and the rest was history.

Why Being Naïve Helped

Oh my, was I naïve. I looked at all my peers both in the industry and on social media starting businesses in New York and thought, I’m just like them! They all have businesses they’re making a living off of, I’ll do the same (lol)! I had absolutely zero idea that people start businesses designed to lose money to create tax loses on their balance sheet. Or because they were bored. Or because they actually got fired several times from their previous employers. Or because their parents did the same thing decades before.

But you know what? I’m so glad I was incredibly naïve. And I didn’t understand how New York really worked at all. In retrospect, if I knew back then what I know now, I’m not sure if I would have been brave enough to start a clothing business based in New York that was going to have to muster through a pandemic, a wild social media algorithm rollercoaster and several economic transitions. The fact that Sam and I never moved our business during Covid, or that we kept manufacturing jobs alive during the pandemic for those who needed it the most, are achievements that we’ll have forever.

Be Grateful for What Sets You Apart

I think the real takeaway is, be grateful for the thing that sets you apart, whatever it is. I’m constantly surrounded by hardened, wizened New Yorkers who probably received better business and life advice that I did in my mid twenties. I find myself in rooms I’m not qualified to be in all the time. But if you never take big risks or naïvely assume things will work out, you’ll always cut off your biggest possibilities.

As MM is about to turn six this fall, I need to channel a bit of that naïveté again. Many aspects of our business run like a well oiled machine, and it’s time again for big growth. Big risks and big asks. I’m cautious to take big risks. It’s time to act like my twenty eight year old self again, who just assumed it would all work out. Because if not me, who? If not you, who? Why don’t we deserve to take a huge risk and achieve everything we hope for?

xx,

MM