Rosemary: I’m Rosemary . . .
Beatrice: I’m Beatrice . . .
R: . . . and this is Not Without My Sister. We should say, at the top of this podcast, that we are sisters.
B: Happily.
R: Aren’t we Beatrice?
B: We are sisters.
R: [laughing] You seem very unsure about this. Like, hmmm, are we?
B: We are sisters. In fact, on one occasion, Rosemary on the bus from Galway to Dublin was mistaken for me, by somebody who was in my class in college. Do you remember that?
R: There were two occasions. There was one time on the bus in Galway and there was another time I was walking down Grafton St, and somebody stopped me and said, ‘you must be Beatrice Mac Cabe’s sister’. And I was raging.
B: Oh, were you? I would’ve been more raging that, like, the person who knew me actually very well thought that you were me, because I’m almost seven years older than you, so what does that say about you?
R: [gasps]
[Music plays]
R: Today, right, this is an excellent anecdote segue into the topic of our episode today, but today – I was outside weeding with my boyfriend’s son. Well, I was weeding and he was just being very ineffectual but I was pretending he was being good, saying encouraging things, and he was literally just digging up lumps of muck and ignoring the dandelion – nobody cares about the dandelion roots except me. Anyway – he was talking about some character in a video game that he wants to be, and he was going, ‘I think it’d be great to be him because he’s 20 and he doesn’t have to do anything his parents say any more.’ And I said, ‘Well – I’m an adult and sometimes I still do what my parents say.’ And he looks at me and he goes, ‘pfft. Yeah, but like this guy has a job.’
B: [laughing] From the mouths of babes.
R: From the mouths of seven-year-olds! And I went, ‘Well, I have a job!’ And he was like, ‘pfft, but you don’t leave the house.’ And I was like . . .
B: Well, none of us do now in fairness, any more.
R: Very true.
B: If that makes you feel any better.
R: It doesn’t. He was so dismissive. Yeah, but he has a job.
B: You see, the problem is with kids, when they tell you things, you know it’s true.
R: I know! And I was just thinking, little does he know now, I’m going to record an entire, hour-long ramble with my sister about our careers. I do have a job!
B: You’re like, I’m planning to work for at least an hour today!
R: I’m gonna force him to listen to this now. My God, are you drinking tea?!
B: Yeah!
R: That’s not like you.
B: Oh no, I’ve got the wine right here beside me too. Don’t worry. Fear not.
R: I don’t have wine, I only have Diet Coke. Hashtag hopingforasponsor. Diet Coke.
B: Oh, my God.
R: [laughs]
B: I don’t know that we’re the best representations of Diet Coke – no offence. Just saying. Or maybe we are! Because without it . . .
R: Oh, my God!
B: Oh sorry! Sorry, sorry! I know you hate that! I, I should say I. I am not the best representation . . . Oh my God, sorry. [laughing]
R: That honestly . . . There’s nothing I hate more than when somebody lumps you in with their own body issues!
B: [laughing, not sounding remotely sorry] I’m sorry!
R: I have a friend who used to do that to me all the time. I’d see her at Christmas, she’d look at me really sympathetically and go, ‘How are you getting on with the diet?’ And I’d be like, ‘I’m not on a fucking diet!’ Although obviously I was so I was fucking raging, getting on great can’t you tell?
B: Well, moving on. I didn’t mean that. It was about me. You’re right. That was projection. You do you – I will . . . Moving on.
R: Don’t, ‘You do you’ me, excuse me!
B: Moving on! My god, so embarrassing. Anyway! Moving on.
R: Today we thought we’d talk about our careers, because they’re great! We’re real high achievers, but also because we asked in the last podcast for people to suggest things that they’d like us to talk about, didn’t we?
B: We did.
R: And we got a long list of things – lots of them were about Beatrice, which was very annoying. Like, ‘Tell us more about your sister! How did she end up in America? Tell us more about your sister’s life in America!’
B: You can’t really complain. I don’t really think there’s anything about your life that people who follow you or are interested in you don’t already know, down to the most intimate detail, as our Mother would say. Much to our mother’s chagrin. ‘I hate when Rosemary’s on the radio – I hate the stuff she talks about! She just shares everything!’ [laughing]
R: You know I got a text from her, as she was listening to . . . I think it was episode 3, where I was talking about being in France and that German guy sitting down beside me and putting his hand on the gusset of my knickers . . . [laughs] and she texted me and was literally like, ‘This podcast’ with a capital P ‘is not for your parents. Why did you tell us to listen to this?’
B: Oh my God! Why did you tell her?
R: I didn’t tell her to listen to that! I actually assumed . . .
B: Oh, you shouldn’t be complaining! You’re always complaining that she doesn’t listen to your capital p podcast.
R: She has never listened to a single one of my capital P podcasts until you appeared on it, and now that we are doing a podcast together, she is listening to every episode – what does that say to you? Maybe you’re the favourite.
B: [wistfully] Oh! Let’s move on. Let’s talk about our careers. Let’s get into the meat and potatoes of the conversation, as they say in Ireland.
R: Yeah. Exactly.
B: Do they say that in Ireland any more?
R: No.
B: Did they ever, actually?
R: No. Let’s start with you, seeing as you are the one people are most interested in, then they can just switch off for the second half.
B: [laughs] You are so self deprecating it’s ridiculous!
R: I’m very humble. Hashtag stay humble. Beatrice! Tell us about your amazing career. How did you get to where you are now, the dazzling heights of Fort Wayne, Indiana?
B: [laughing] You bint! I like to say, Rosemary, as a joke – and then I always regret it because it’s generally people in Fort Wayne that I say it to – that I have done my career backwards. So I started out in Milan, went to Paris, to New York, had a small trip to Dallas and then ended up in Fort Wayne. And correct, I say that is not necessarily the normal arc of a fashion career. But I actually don’t even know, necessarily, that I work in a fashion company any more? It’s more . . . Vera Bradley’s kind of unique. But I did start out in fashion. So I studied fashion in NCAD; I did a joint course . . . What’s it called? History of Art and Design, and Fashion.
R: Oh yeah. When you first studied fashion design, what did you imagine . . . Did you imagine you were going to be a fashion designer, under your own name and your own brand? Was that kind of the . . . Did you have a dream, in that way? If you know what I mean.
B: Not necessarily. I just thought I would design clothes. So that’s probably the first correction that happened to me, so to speak. I thought I would do clothes. I was always making everything – making clothes, making stuff, doing fashion wheel, right? Super cool.
R: Oh my God, making clothes. Do you remember you made my confirmation dress?
B: [laughs] You’re so ungrateful!
R: No, no, no! I was really . . .
B: That glorious shift!
R: I really wanted a chic little 90s secretary – which is what I got, basically. A little shift dress in a pinstripe, remember Mum’s heart was nearly broken? Because you were finishing it the night before the confirmation, Mum had been saying for weeks, ‘Beatrice you really wanna get that started’, and you’re a bit like me, I think, in that you’re very good at doing things at the very last minute.
B: Very good at it.
R: And this was the very, very last minute.
B: I also made my own debs dress, you reminded me now! That orange thing – that bright orange thing that, like, when I . . .
R: I thought it was gorgeous!
B: I felt gorgeous, until I got there, and then I was like, ugh, everybody’s dressed like a princess, like they’re going to the princess ball.
R: Oh I know. I know.
B: I just looked like I was at a different event. And my purple feather boa! Ha, ha. I still love that colour combination. That’s why I ended up in Marni. It’s all purple and orange and avocado.
R: You looked really cool. We must actually dig out a photograph. Oh my God there’s a terrible photograph, actually, of the two of us standing in the sitting room, and you’re going to the debs and I’m wearing a fleece. I don’t know why Mum couldn’t have put something nicer on me!
B: I have some photographs somewhere, but loads of them are in black and white, which is really annoying. It was so trendy for a while, you know?
R: It’s really annoying!
B: It’s really hard cos then you can’t kind of date it.
R: That’s probably an advantage because you could pretend it’s chic and black and white.
B: Oh, you’re right. Well I mean, it was cool. It was cool at the time.
R: It was cool.
B: I have some photographs somewhere. So, in college I did . . . I took a year out, actually, because I hated my fashion course. But it was more the politics of it. I did three years – I did my Erasmus, and I went to Milan, because I’d always wanted to go to Italy. I always wanted to live in Italy, and obviously it’s a big capital of fashion. Famous, renowned for that – and I wanted to learn Italian, and I fancied all the art history, etc. So it was just, kind of, that was my dream, you know? So I did my Erasmus and I went there, and went to Milan, right? Wasn’t it Milan? Yeah.
R: Did you go to Milan or did you go to Bergamo?
B: No, I went to Milan. I worked, my first job was in Bergamo. No, I went to Milan and I was underwhelmed by the college that I went to. In NCAD we had, at least, you know, knitting machines – and over there, I went to my first knitting class and they all whipped out their knitting needles. You would have loved it, actually. But I was very taken aback.
R: Sorry! Beatrice – I would have hated it! They would’ve been like, ‘Knit 10 rows’ and 40 minutes later I would’ve still be on row eight, like, ‘Where’s everyone gone?’
B: I like that – just like today, the boys came in before this and asked Rosemary if she would knit two yoshis. She’s like, ‘Yes, get back to me in two years.’ But I don’t know if you’ve actually met these children – now that you’ve offered them something, every single second of every single day they’re going to be waiting for this knit Yoshi, for the next two years.
R: No, no, no. I actually think I’m safe because Beau cycles through his Yoshi obsession very quickly. It’ll be Kirbys in two weeks and then it’ll be something else.
B: Oh no, it’s full on. It’s currently masks, NERF guns and masks. They love wearing these masks around their lanyard, their Vera Bradley lanyards. They look the epitome of chic. Anyway. So I went to Milan.
R: I don’t remember this at all. I don’t think I missed you at all.
B: Thanks. I lived with various different people . . . I was only there for three months.
R: Oh, okay, so it wasn’t a whole year.
B: It felt very long. Yeah, only for three months. It was hard because I didn’t have the language at all. Hadn’t ever studied Italian etc. But I mean it was great – it was very exciting and inspirational, but I don’t know that I got an awful lot out of the college itself. I remember there was fashion illustration, as well, and instead of saying, ‘Hey, let’s look at the clothes’ or, ‘Let’s think about the poses . . .’ I remember the only feedback they ever gave me was, ‘Your lipstick isn’t bright enough on this illustration – you need to give her more fashionable eyelashes.’ And I was always like, what? This is . . . How is this . . . This is bizarre. So then I went back, took a year out.
R: I’d love fashionable eyelashes.
B: I know. I took a year out, and I went down and lived in Kilkenny.
R: Oh yeah, okay. It’s all coming together to me now.
B: I worked for a printmaker, Sabina Braxton, I worked for her during that year, and I also worked for the Irish Landmark Trust. I think I was in a bit of . . . I was kind of, I’m never going back to fashion. I hate it. I’m gonna go and do architecture, which is actually what I wanted to do in college in the first place.
R: But what happened – you didn’t get accepted into architecture, did you? I thought they decided you were too artistic or something?
B: They said – they were like, ‘You can come here but we think you should go and do fashion design,’ and I was kind of in two minds, did I want to do architecture or did I want to do fashion? So that kind of pushed me further towards the fashion, and also I’d done a two-week job placement, you know the way you do in fifth year or whatever, in my uncle’s, in the civil service, he was in the . . .
R: The Office of Public Works, the OPW.
B: Yeah, yeah. Actually I enjoyed it, but I think I was more like, oh my God, fashion is going to be so exciting and glamorous etc. Although I still think architecture would be great. Anyway! And then I went back . . . I was like, I’ll just go back, I’ll just finish this year, I’ll just get my degree. So I went back, and I actually really enjoyed fourth year. That was good. And what did I do then . . . Then I went to Italy. Literally, the next week after I graduated, I packed my bag and went to Italy. And I stayed there with my cousin, our cousin lived there.
R: When you went to Italy straight after you finished your degree, did you have a job lined up, any work or anything, or were you just gonna go over and hoof it around trying to find work?
B: Yeah, that’s exactly, I was gonna go over and hoof it around. I was very optimistic, and Mum used to send me over €50 a week, because she was always concerned that I was starving – which I was, starving, actually. I looked great. This is again, you know, my own body issues.
R: Stop!
B: I know, right?
R: Stop glamourising starvation.
B: I know. Not any more, but at the time I thought I looked great because I was absolutely starving. Could only afford a cappuccino and an orange every day. Of course I was skinny. Oh, and wine.
R: [laughs]
B: Just to be clear.
R: To be fair, wine was very cheap in Italy.
B: Wine was very cheap! And there were always millions of people willing to buy it for you, was the other thing. Go to a bar, everybody’s buying you wine. Oh my God, I was thinking about the terrible, terrible situations I put myself in, in Italy. But those are stories for another . . .
R: Those are stories for another podcast, yeah.
B: Honestly I was like, oh my God I actually think I would kill myself now! If I saw the behaviour of me. Anyway. I remember I went to Etro. I went to every single fashion house. I knocked on the door, I sent my resume. I’m sure they turned around and chucked it in the bin. Because really so much of it is about connections. Not so much being connected, but having an introduction.
R: Yeah yeah, having someone to go, ‘This is my friend’ or ‘this is my cousin’. I have this vision of you now like in Coyote Ugly when Piper Perabo starts going around to all of the record companies and going, ‘can I just give you my demo?’ And they’re like, [sarcastically] ‘Sure’.
B: Oh my God exactly! Exactly, yeah. And finally I went to a company, a recruitment agency, and they got me a job. And actually I think it was so shady now when I think about it. They got me a job with . . .
R: Fiorucci, wasn’t it?
B: Yeah, Fiorucci. But it was like a licensee.
R: Fiorucci is making a big comeback!
B: Yeah, I mean they’ve always been cool – but this company owned the license for Fiorruci. It was out in Bergamo and I used to get up every morning at 3am to get a lift from one of the guys who worked out there, and he would pick me up out on the road at 3.45, and we would drive the hour and a half, then I’d do my day’s work, then I’d come back the hour and a half, probably go out, drink loads of wine, then get up at 3am. So I did that for about . . .
R: Three a.m.?!
B: Yeah! I was very dedicated! When I say to people, ‘I worked really hard’, like, I worked really hard! So I got up, did that . . .
R: I am horrified. I’m remembering the handful of times I got up at 4am to go to the gym with my mad friend Niamh, and that was hard. But then I used to come home and get back into bed at half past five! For two hours! Three hours!
B: Well, it was after about the first three months . . . So, this should’ve been. Obviously, in hindsight, this should’ve been the writing on the wall. After the first three months, I worked with two girls – just me and these two other girls, it was great fun. We did, we just sketched clothes, all day long. It was fantastic. And they lived there in a hotel that was paid for by the company, and I was always like, ‘Why am I the mug?’ This is my common refrain throughout my career. Am I the mug?! Anyway, eventually they were like, ‘Oh your paycheque’s gonna be delayed but we’re gonna put you up in this hotel’, and I was like, ‘Great!’ So they put me up in this hotel. Two weeks later we get kicked out of the hotel by the hotel proprietor because bills have not been paid, and we’ve been putting everything on our room service etc! You can imagine!
R: [laughing]
B: I mean, not living it up or anything, but we had been ordering . . . We’d been eating food because we were told to. Have your dinner here, etc. And then – in month four, I went to work one day. I had to get the bus then at this point, cos yer man – yer man got let go so I had to get the bus, so I had to get up even earlier.
R: Ugh!
B: and then walk about a mile, in the morning, to the place from the bus stop. And when I got there, this morning, all the women who worked in the sewing, in the atelier, were out on the street with placards, in their uniforms, you know, obviously on strike! And I’m going, the innocence of me! I was like, ‘What is going on?! What is this celebration?’ So I’m the . . . Whatever it’s called, I’m the one crossing the picket line, going into the office, doing my day’s work. No idea!
R: Passing the picket!
B: Exactly! But I’d no idea! And then, afterwards, when I asked for a translation of what it meant, it meant, pay us our salaries. We haven’t been paid for six months, etc. So I realised, at that point . . . Did I realise? Probably not.
R: Things weren’t going well.
B: Things were not going well. Yeah. But I still stuck it out for another two or three weeks, then got told, hey you’re never getting paid. We’re closing down. So: back to square one, I found myself back in Milan going, what’s next? But then my cousin’s friend introduced me to – he had a connection at Marni. And he heard they were looking for somebody to sketch the clothing for the design team. So basically they would do the roughest kind of artistic sketch and then I would interpret it in a much more technical fashion.
R: Okay.
B: I wonder, actually, if I still have some of those drawings. They were very nice. It was actually a really, really zen job. The hours were crazy but for the first couple of months it was super zen – I just sat there, all day, with clothes on mannequins, drawing these beautiful portrait drawings. It was so gorgeous. Then they started to realise I could use the computer which was the end of me. So I was put on making line sheets and then I was working with the creative director. It was so tiny, there were only three or four designers in the whole place. Three, I think, and the creative director. I worked directly with her, and then I started travelling with her and she started involving me more and I got very involved in the print development because again, I remember one time I was at home and I lived over an hour away on the bus. And she called me up at 11pm and she was like, ‘Beatrice I need you to come into the office. It’s urgent.’ So I got out of my pyjamas, got into my clothes, got down on the creepy bus, because I lived – you know, not in the most salubrious area of Milan, went to work, walked the whatever, 25-minute walk from the bus stop down to the office, went up to the third floor, and she goes, ‘I don’t know how to turn on this computer. Turn it on for me please.’ And I literally pressed the power button –
R: [gasps]
B: – turned around, and went home. And . . .
R: [laughing]
B: Yeah. So there were these moments of not the most glamorous fashion moments, either, but – anyway. I actually have my time cards, I was looking at them recently, my time stamps, and it was insane the amount of hours that I worked there. We didn’t necessarily start super – we started at about nine or nine-thirty, which, I should put in the notes, is now, to me at the time, was a very regular start time. Now, in Fort Wayne, Indiana, everybody here is up with the chickens.
R: Oh, I know, stop. Stop!
B: This is literally like, ‘Oh I’ve put on a 7am meeting because you’re all booked up.’ I’m like, 7am?!
R: Mmm-hmm.
B: And of course working from home has only made that even worse. ‘Could we sneak in a 6.45?’ Eh, you can feel free! I’ll join you later. [laughs] Go for it.
R: Listen – I learned this when I started dating Brandin and he was like, we’re gonna go for breakfast on Sunday with, you know, Ami and Kurt and a few of our friends.
B: Oh, I was horrified.
R: And I was like, ‘Oh great, what time?’ And he’s like, ‘8.30.’ Like, what? On a Sunday? What? And he was like, [scoffing], ‘why, what time would you have breakfast?!’
B: Well, any day of the week, but especially on Sunday!
R: I mean, for a person with a job, who’s like, ‘we’re gonna have breakfast at 8.30am before work, fine . . .’
B: When I started here as well they did a lot of morning on boarding meetings, so it’d be like, ‘okay I want you to meet up with the director of sourcing’, or with somebody from IT or whatever, just to get to know the various people around the organisation. So many people were like, ‘How about we meet at 6.30 for breakfast outside of the office and then go to work?’ And like, you’re brand new! How do you say . . . ‘Em . . .’ [laughing] ‘Okay . . . I don’t really eat breakfast.’ [laughs]
R: Brandin gets up at 4.30 every day to go to work. Now, he’s actually mad because he doesn’t leave until 5.45 but he likes to get up and have his breakfast and stuff.
B: Mum and Dad used to get up at the crack of dawn as well and go to work. I suppose . . .
R: I know, yeah.
B: I’m sure lots of people are listening to us going, get over yourselves, this is not weird. Right?
R: No, but like, Sunday breakfast at 8.30 IS weird.
B: Oh, Sunday’s definitely weird. That’s totally weird. Except if you have kids. I mean, I now think . . . oh, it’s already 8.30!
R: I know, at 8.30 you’re like, Jesus is it bedtime for them yet?
B: Yeah.
R: We’ve been up for hours. Anyway, sorry, okay so you’re in Marni, and what was your job title in Marni then?
B: So I started out as design assistant, or associate, I can’t remember. It’s not quite the same levels, it was more like, designer [in Italian] assistente, assistant. And then – oh, yeah yeah, that was not like because I didn’t think anybody could decipher that. I was just thinking about what my title was. Sorry. Ha! And then I moved into accessories and print design, so I did a load of research, a load of vintage buying and interpreted patterns and worked on handbags and shoes and jewellery. I wasn’t really involved in the clothing. It wasn’t a choice, if you know what I mean, but once I started working on accessories I found it really interesting, in a way that I wasn’t as interested in the clothing, you know? I was more fascinated by the democracy of a handbag. How it can be for everybody, you know? And how everybody can get this from this product, everybody can participate. It’s much more universal than, say, clothing, you know where you have to be a certain size for certain brands, or. . .
R: A certain shape, or certain . . . Yeah. Also, the certain lifestyle.
B: Yeah, and they’re also just really feel good things, you know? Everybody can buy a handbag and everybody can enjoy it, whereas you can buy the clothes that can make you feel like crap, you know? Aw, this top, I never should have bought it, it’s hideous on me. Every time I wear this . . . I mean, yesterday I went to the office, for the first time ever, and I was like, ‘Oh I’ll try on this shirt’ – that YOU gave me, actually! – this leopard crossover shirt. Now, number one, why do people make crossover shirts that do not close and all that happens all day long is that my boobs just hang out of it, right?
R: I think that’s the one that I actually had professionally seamed, because the inside wasn’t … Wundawebbed, you know what I mean? So it just kept popping out. So annoying. The inside seam.
B: Oh yeah, I know what you mean. But also, I wore it with these red earrings and this red skirt, and halfway through the day I was like, I have forgotten how to dress myself. I actually look atrocious. And then! Kevin, in the office, said something to me like, ‘Oh – are you auditioning for Falcon Crest?’ And I was like, I cannot. I literally . . . YES! Rosemary, thank you for looking shocked. I can’t, right? How rude!
R: The cheek.
B: And he was dead right! And then I caught a glimpse of myself on the camera and I was like, I look absolutely ridiculous! I look like Alexis Carrington, circa 1982.
R: That’s a good look.
B: Which actually sounds cool, but it wasn’t a good look for me. And my hair was atrocious. I was looking like a cross between the Grog from Fraggle Rock and Alexis Carrington.
R: [laughing] You’re obsessed with this Grog!
B: Well I’ll show you! I’ll actually show you a picture. I took a picture the other day of me with my mask and my hair, and I was like, there’s something very Groggy about this.
R: You did look a bit like the Grog. A little bit.
B: Thanks.
R: It was the mask! It wasn’t you, it was the mask.
B: [deep sigh] Okay. So I’d better get faster cos this is going to take too long. Okay, so then I went, anyway . . . Oh. Oh this is a good one, actually. Then I got obsessed with, I want to get another job, I want to move to Paris. I was always thinking about moving back to Ireland, so I was always applying for jobs in Ireland and pitching myself for jobs in Ireland. But, and this is connected, I was also very good at Photoshop, right? So I was very good friends with a lot of the people in Marni, and there was a couple who worked there, and the guy worked downstairs. Marni actually originally was called Chiwi Furs and they make all the furs for, it was a family company, and they made all the furs for Fendi. They still do. Fendi, Valentino etc. That’s how they started out. And then they had three sons, and one of the sons married Consuelo, who’s the founder of Marni, and she started it more as – and it was more of an offshoot of the fur. There was a lot of fur in the beginning of Marni, if you look at it. Then she had a really strong colour sense, and style sense, and a very unique, playful identity. So she started her own sub brand, which actually became probably bigger than Chiwi Furs at the time, right? Oh – that’s conjecture, on my part. But it seems like it was more the focus. But anyway, downstairs there was still all of the fur manufacturing and styling. It was really amazing, craftsmen, obviously, polarising but very amazing. Anyway, one of the guys, the husband of one of the women that I worked with, worked down there. And it was his birthday. So I took one of the photos from our most recent fashion show, and it was three beautiful models, with jewellery and clothes on and all that kind of stuff, and I Photoshopped his face, with a big beard, into the middle picture, right? And then we all did, happy birthday, we all thought this was great, happy birthday Antonio, we all signed it and brought it down to him and laughed our heads off, etc. Fast forward about two months later, I’m like, I want to get another job – because I’d been there for three years, which is a long enough time in fashion, but also I think sometimes to progress you have to leave. You’ll have this slow growth within a company, or you can kind of jump up the ladder, up a couple of rungs, by moving elsewhere.
R: Yeah – especially if the company is small. There’s not that much room to go anywhere.
B: Actually, you’ve reminded me. This was a family-run company, and the daughter and the son were just graduating college. And it was very clear that they were going to be next. And I wanted to grow and, actually, loved my job. But I did want to see, you know, get that broader experience. So I wrote to Edun, right? [laughs] This is so embarrassing!
R: This is Ali Hewson’s company?
B: Yeah. [laughing] I wrote to them and I was like, ‘hi!’ So embarrassing. I was like, ‘I really enjoy your company, I appreciate the purpose-driven nature of it, etc, as an Irish person I can really relate to this, I am, you know, have this experience, I am these capabilities and my attention to detail is, you know . . . top notch, basically!’ [laughing] And then I attached a load of examples of my work, sent it off.
R: Oh, God.
B: Never heard anything! I was like, the cheek of them! Can’t believe they never wrote back, because that was also my naiveté at the time, right? Next thing you know, a couple of weeks later, I’m like, scrolling through – I’m gonna look again! That was a really great letter and I sent them really great work examples. I’m gonna check this out, I can’t believe they never replied to me. So I’m scrolling through these attachments going, ‘That’s a phenomenal bag, I can’t believe they didn’t answer me! That’s a beautiful print, the cheek of them!’ Then I get to the picture of the three models and it’s sadly the wrong one, with Antonio in the middle, his big bearded head. I just can’t imagine what they were thinking! Oh, so embarrassing.
R: [laughing]
B: So I’m very careful now, whenever I write letters or send off applications to double, triple, quadruple check.
R: Or, whenever you photograph people’s heads into photographs, delete them from your computer?
B: Exactly! [laughing] So true!
R: Oh my God, I’m now remembering a particularly horrifying . . . When we went to Amsterdam for Mum’s 60th and you Photoshopped my face into her head, or vice versa, and it was like the exact same person!
B: Literally Doppelgängers! But you were in the exact same pose, at the exact same angle at the table. . .
R: I know! And wearing very similar earrings as well.
B: I was looking for that picture recently and couldn’t find it, you’ll have to find it.
R: No, I couldn’t find it either, TG.
B: It’s amazing! Okay. So I then got contacted by a headhunter in London saying, hey, we have a company in Paris that’s looking for accessory designers. I was working with my friend at the time, so we said, well we’d both like to come, myself and Julie.
R: As design partners, wasn’t it?
B: Yeah. We were like, ‘Let’s pitch both of us!’ So we went over, we met John Galliano, which was very exciting, and we got the job. So we both were working there, in Paris, and that was really exciting – and we were there for three years. And then . . . I loved working at Galliano, actually. And we also did some, we spent some time in the Dior studio because obviously he was over both. So it was really amazing exposure. And the studio was super fun. It was just a very, kind of, vibrant team. Everybody was the same age, very . . . probably single, all kind of hanging out together, so you were really all friends, as well, which was really nice.
R: Yeah. He was also from that, kind of, group of . . . he had gone through Central St Martins, hadn’t he? So he was really . . . I mean the sense I got from that studio, and I’m thinking of it in comparison to the next place that you went, was very young, very fun, full of creatives who were very passionate but also very diverse and quirky, in their own way. And there wasn’t so much of a, like, we’re in fashion. You know what I mean?
B: It was very . . . More like being around a load of artists, you’re right. And it was very familiar because a lot of the people who worked there had gone to college with him, or had interned for him. A lot of people were interns and then were employed, so it was a very loyal band of friends, working together. Also, because it was more his passion project – it was financed by Dior but there wasn’t the same, I think, urgency for it to be as commercial as Dior. Dior was the money maker and then this was more the, kind of, press end of . . . This was the PR machine. This was where he got to be his true creative self. He was super passionate about his men’s line. His men’s line was really fun to work on – and all of the fashion shows were, like, phenomenal. They were all massive theatrical spectacles. So elaborate and creative and amazing. Really, really exciting. But after a while I kind of started to think, from my own perspective, I want to understand how to run a business, you know? I want to understand what the mechanisms are that make something commercial – and working on something so avant-garde, you never got to see anybody wearing it. Because (a) it was so expensive and (b) it was such a limited edition. He had one store. He had some wholesale retail partners, but the majority of the business was actually private clients. So many well-known celebrities came in to be fitted for their weddings, or for events that they were doing, and he also had a big following in the Middle East, so a lot of the royal families would come for their weddings and would be, like, 72 people commissioning clothing. So that was really probably the driver of the business, and that wasn’t so much what I had anything to do with. I was, I suppose to your point, thinking, how am I going to be the most well-rounded for the future? You know? So I wanted to go to America, because certainly Americans are all about the business. And so, again, I got contacted by a headhunter, myself and Julie both, and we both went to America, to Diane von Furstenberg.
R: [in a British accent, inexplicably] We went to America!
B: We did, and I remember we were interviewed by her, in her apartment in Paris, and she had this – I mean, amazing apartment. It was amazing to go to her personal home, apart from anything else. It was so eclectic.
R: In Paris?
B: Yeah, she has – she had. I don’t know if she has . . . I mean, irrelevant. To her apartment at the time there, yeah, and the two of us arrived along, and I was wearing my tightest, tightest pencil skirt, which I was very proud of, and extremely high heels, and a blouse, right? And I looked . . . I mean. I think, at the time, I thought I looked great. . .
R: I’d say you looked great! Very chic.
B: Yeah! I looked great. And so we arrived into her sitting room, and the housekeeper opened the door and let us in, and kind of said, you know, ‘Diane will be here in a minute.’ So we’re sitting there, in the sitting room, on the couch, and there were many couches. Just to be clear. There were many couches. There were beaded chairs. There was a divan. There was a chaise longue. There was, the whole thing. Diane comes in, anyway, and she goes, ‘Oh hello.’ And she goes, ‘Oh, please ladies, actually sit over here.’ So we stand up and we sit on the other side, and she goes, ‘Oh, no, no, no. Please sit there.’ So she points at these beaded chairs, so we go – literally, every time my bum nearly touched my seat, she goes, ‘Oh, actually! No, no, no. Sit on the floor.’ And she curled up like a feline leopard on her chaise longue and we proceeded to be interviewed sitting on the floor. If you can imagine me in the tightest skirt ever, I was like, please, please do not rip up the back like you did that time in Cork when I was out and did a Spice Girls high kick, my skirt ripped all the way up the back on my night out in town, it was so embarrassing. Please, please, please. So luckily nothing . . . But I just remember going, this is weird.
R: I can’t believe she made you sit on the floor and I also can’t believe that . . . in a way, having made you sit on the floor, you were like, ‘Yeah this is the job for us.’
B: I know! In hindsight, I thought that too! I was like, am I the mug?! Yes! I know. I know. You’re making a yes face. And so then we worked for her for three or four years, and it was, I think it was very amazing to work for a company that was so female-centric. Everybody was female, you know, there were a couple of men working there but it really did celebrate women. And I appreciated that a lot. That was a very empowering . . . Except, as usual, a lot of the very senior roles were men, as well. There were a lot of senior females, but the head creative director was a man, head of finance was a man. Not to say you can’t have men in your company, but I felt like that was a bit . . . Her creative directors are generally men, have all been men. And so . . .
R: I would like to lower the tone slightly and just point out the fact that, when you got the job at DVF, it was the same time that The City was launching, on MTV, and Whitney and Olivia Palermo had started work at DVF, in the PR department, and I was so excited about your brush with fame.
B: Oh. I mean, they had these two temporary desks – they were there about an hour every day. And at the time it was funny because Olivia Palermo was the sidekick. And Whitney was the . . .
R: The star. Of that show, yeah.
B: Yeah. So that was a great job. That was really interesting, and that was accessories. We worked on handbags . . .
R: I can’t believe she made you sit on the floor.
B: I know, right? We launched handbags for her, and jewellery. Everything, accessories-wise. Then I worked for Vince Camuto, which I think, is or was available in Brown Thomas at one point.
R: I think it still is? I think it’s in Arnotts, as well.
B: I got that job through one of the girls that I worked with at DVF, her uncle was the president of Vince Camuto at the time, and so I met him at a party, etc, and he then reached out and said, ‘Hey, do you want to come and work here?’ And so I went there and Julie got a job in Juicy Couture, and she went to Juicy Couture. At that point we decided, you know, we wanted to kind of grow our own careers and see if you could be successful by yourself, you know?
R: Spread your wings!
B: Yeah. So I worked there and I was there only for a year, and it was amazing because I worked on lots of different brands. Vince Camuto’s a footwear company, right, so they have a tonne of different brands that they do footwear for. But they wanted to try handbags, so they were like, we’re gonna build a massive powerhouse handbag company, and you’re gonna lead this. So that was super exciting. I worked on lots of different brands at the same time, so that was really interesting, lots of different teams. I was only there for about a year, and I travelled way too much. I had just had my first baby, he was three months old when I started that job, and I spent six months of the next year, in Asia. Literally, fully six months, I was not there. And I regret that now. That was really stressful, and I think I was pretty unhappy, in terms of, I didn’t remotely do a good job balancing my personal life. Very often, we worked until 3, 4am, when I was in New York, and then for the other six months I was in Asia. So I feel like . . . That was not my proudest moment, I have to say.
R: Well, I mean, that’s . . .
B: But, I mean, I didn’t prioritise . . . Some of that was me not saying, ‘Hey, I can’t do this. Hey, we need another person. Hey . . .’ You know? That’s not a reasonable expectation, to say to somebody, you need to stay here until 4am.
R: Yeah, but it’s also really hard to be in a position where you’re being given a lot of responsibility and to stand up and say, ‘We need someone else’, which can sound like, ‘I can’t do this on my own’? You know what I mean?
B: No. Not really, I don’t agree with you – I hear what you’re saying, but I think we’re led to feel like that. That’s . . . That’s a convenient thing for us to feel, and I don’t think I felt like I couldn’t – it just never occurred to me. I was so sleep deprived, so emotionally drained and so . . . emotional after having my first baby. That I really didn’t even know what I was thinking. You know what I mean? I didn’t . . . I kind of lost faith in my own ability to be a good judge of, is this normal, is this not. And it was, I have to say, it was not my favourite experience because I think there was a lot of politics. It was challenging because they were trying to set up this big business, you know? And anything that is really new, is really hard, because there was a lot of leveraging of internal teams, but they’re two very different categories, and so you’re trying to say, ‘Hey, this is different’, but also respect that person’s knowledge and tenure with the company. There is value to that, too, you know? But sometimes it can be a bit, like, ‘who are you? You jumped up . . . you just joined, but I’ve been here for ages. Why are you doing this? I could do this!’ And then, after the first year, one morning we got an email form the HR team that said, ‘Could you all please meet us tomorrow morning?’ And I wrote back, ‘Great! Dying to see you. Should I bring breakfast?’ And I got no reply, right? Which was . . . that’s weird! How weird that they didn’t reply. And when I got there the next day, they were all let go. They shut down the entire division. And I felt like an absolute mug-o because I did rock up with 12 muffins! [laughs]
R: Oh my God, well I actually thought you were gonna say, they wrote back and said, ‘Yes, breakfast would be great.’ That would’ve been worse.
B: Oh, no, no, no. They were like, ‘Okay you can file for unemployment.’ But I couldn’t because I had a H1B, I had a visa. So I couldn’t file for any unemployment. And they said, ‘we’re going to give you two weeks’ severance.’ And I said I’d like three months’ severance, based on the fact that this is going to be really hard to get another job. And actually they came back and I think they gave me three, or maybe two. It was very decent – very unusual. They didn’t really argue. They kind of said, okay, that’s fair enough. But it also made me think of the power of asking. I wouldn’t always have asked. I only asked cos of my visa. If I had been able to get unemployment I may not have asked. I feel like the first offer’s always the worst offer . . . and very often, we take it. We don’t necessarily know that this is intended to be a negotiation.
R: I mean, I don’t know that it would ever occur to me to negotiate – at that point. At the point of, we’re letting you go, I don’t know that I would feel like I could ever negotiate.
B: Cos what’s your leverage, right?
R: Yeah!
B: So then I went to work for JC Penney, and this was supposed to be super exciting, when Ron Johnson took over. He was totally revamping it, and there was a really amazing cast of creative people – there was RuPaul, can’t remember what her name is from Barneys, she was . . . She’s an amazing, she has amazing style. An amazing fashion guru. There was Nick Wooster, right, I think everybody . . . He’s a very famous menswear, again, kind of fashion expert. And all of these people had been brought in to really rethink what a modern-day department store should be like. So it was super energetic and energised, and exciting. And again I was over multiple brands, and it was really – an exciting time. The first week that I was there, my boss and my boss’ boss, and everybody who hired me, was let go. So that was alarming.
R: [laughs]
B: Right? That was alarming. And so then it kind of morphed into, actually Ron Johnson was having a lot of problems, the teams weren’t really on board. The buying teams, who’d been there for 30 years, were like, this one is not, like he’s telling us to do one thing, but we know what we’re doing and we’re going to continue doing what we’ve been doing. So there was a lot of internal friction. And he didn’t really . . . It didn’t really go down very well with all the people in . . . so JC Penney is in Texas, based in Texas, and I was in the New York office. It didn’t really sit very well, that he came in and brought in all of these new people, instead of, again, kind of saying, ‘Okay, what experience is already in the building? You know? And I don’t think there was great communication. It was more like, this crack team is reinventing everything, and we’ll let you know when you need to execute it, versus bringing you on the journey.
R: Yeah.
B: So I think that didn’t go really well. And also, it was very old-fashioned. JC Penney is, I think, a hundred years old, or something, a very traditional retailer. So they had a lot of things – the executive office for this leadership team was up on the second floor, and it was one of the only things that was up in this weird birds’ nest annexe, and there was a separate entry from outdoors – and you could bypass all the plebs, basically. That was how it worked – they would come in, they would land their helicopter on a Monday, they would all take the back stairs up, they would have their private dining room and the private chef and never rub elbows with the hoi polloi, so to speak. And that, also, as you can imagine, did not go down very well. It was like, [terrible New York accent], ‘What are we? Chopped liver?’
R: Am I the mug?
B: Am I the mug! Exactly! I remember when I first learned that phrase, I was like, ‘Chopped liver, what does that mean?!’ I’m actually a moron.
R: What does it mean?
B: Like, who likes chopped liver? Nobody!
R: I’ve had a very delicious liver stir fry in my day.
B: And I would like to say, that example, that you just heard there, is why I don’t do American accents. I actually do do them. That is why I’m not known . . .
R: Only I am good at them.
B: You are not good at them! I am not known for my American accents. And then I got a job at Fossil, also in Texas, but this time we moved to Dallas. We were pregnant with my second child – actually, I had now gotten one, two, three . . . How many jobs . . . loads of jobs while I was pregnant.
R: Oh yeah. So while you were on maternity leave with Nash, you got the job at Vince Camuto.
B: Yeah, but that was kind of fine, so I was not pregnant.
R: Yeah, you were coming back to work. Then while you were pregnant with Beau, you got the job at Fossil.
B: I was five months’ pregnant, yeah.
R: And while you were pregnant with Chance, you got your next job.
B: Yeah. And every single time I went for the interview, got the job offer and then said, ‘Hey I’m pregnant.’ And every single time they were very nice and accommodating, which I presume they have to be. It was so much stress.
R: Do they have to be, in America?
B: Yeah. Well they certainly can’t say we’re rescinding that offer because you’re pregnant. They could say, we’re actually rescinding this offer because we’re not hiring for this role any more, etc.
R: Okay, okay.
B: I think that would be dangerous. But it was very alarming. So I worked there for three years and that was really interesting because it was a lot of categories that I’d never worked on before, like watches, mens’ . . . Well I worked on mens’ in Galliano. But this was more commercial – very commercial, very business-driven. It’s a billion-dollar business, you know? And so it was huge and really interesting to get into the nuts and bolts of how the business works, which was really what I am interested in. And then there was a marketing aspect, print development, all that kind of stuff. So really all-encompassing. That was really an interesting job. And then there was a lot of internal change, in terms of leadership, and I started thinking, it was kind of a time of a lot of disruption, after about three years again, and I was approached by another headhunter, about this job here – which I ended up kind of going, ‘Oh I’m not interested’, and Don was like, ‘we are not going back to Indiana’. He used to live in Indiana, years ago.
R: And hated it.
B: Yeah! And here we are! And yet here we are, happy as Larry, as they say!
R: Happy as Larry. And so you went from your very first job, say, in Marni was as design assistant – and what’s your title now?
B: So now I am chief creative officer, so I’m responsible for all product design and development for the creative design . . . So. Every product or asset or thing that the customer sees, goes through my team . . .
R: Falls under your remit.
B: Yeah. So kind of creating that holistic vision of what a brand is, you know?
R: Yeah, yeah. So the brand look and feel, all of that falls under your . . . And how many years are there between when you started at Marni and where you are now? Just, I mean, I think it’s interesting to figure out how long it’s taken to get from X to Y.
B: Eighteen. And I have been here for two years. So 16. But I think that, what is great about this job is that it’s really collaborative. It’s not as singular, maybe, as a lot of places that I’ve worked before, you know? Where I . . . I really believe that the best outcomes are part of teamwork. I don’t think anybody has brilliant ideas in a vacuum.
R: You’re doing your presenter’s voice now.
B: Am I?
R: Yes. You’re like, ‘I really believe that the best outcomes come from . . . you know [dreamily] teamwork.’ Delighted with myself now!
B: Are you?
R: You have a presenter’s voice too!
B: Do I?
R: A bit. I repeated it exactly as you said it! People won’t know if it’s me or if it’s you. They will actually, cos you’re the posh one. You know what’s funny though, I remember when you were working in Paris, at Galliano, I remember being so . . . I mean, I don’t want to say jealous, because then Mum’s going to listen to this and be like, ‘Oh she’s always been very jealous.’
B: [laughs] She doesn’t think that!
R: Oh my God, she does! She’s like, ‘You’re just like my friend Tina. She used to be jealous of everyone!’ She says this to me all the time.
B: Oh my God, you’re not allowed name people.
R: [long pause] Ah, you are when they’re old.
B: [laughs]
R: She’s grand!
B: I mean, you’re allowed name Mum! You can name Mum.
R: But I remember being really . . . jealous is kind of the wrong word because it doesn’t really make sense in the context but I was jealous . . .
B: REALLY jealous, is that what you mean? Really jealous.
R: No, I was jealous because I was like, oh my God, she’s so successful and I think you were 25 or 26 at that point, and I was like, I’m never going to be that successful when I’m 26. And I was fucking right! I was right to be jealous all along!
B: You were that successful! It’s just now that you don’t have a job. [laughs]
[music plays]
R: It turns out that chatting through somebody’s 25-year-plus career takes longer than you think, so part two – where we discuss my career – is coming next week.
Not Without My Sister is produced by Liam Geraghty. Sound editing and original music by Don Kirkland. Our original illustration is by Lindsay Neilson.
