Around the World in 40 Hours

What a month this has been... first: work, work, work in Sri Lanka! Production coordination + meetings with our nonprofit partner + explaining the importance of durable gold foil printing for 2 weeks...

Below, with Upali at the screenprinter:



How do you say, "IT MUST WITHSTAND 1,000 WASHES" in Sinhala? They never taught me!


I see devil heads in my sleep...

On this trip, I was also fortunate enough to bring Mr. C. Stephen Hurst, School House Photographer Extraordinaire, with me! He took a few thousand gorgeous images which you'll see on SH's forthcoming full website launch on April 8th - amazing stuff. There will also be a selection on display at the School House Trunk Show Event @ Duke, Saturday, April 18th at 10:15 a.m. (more on that soon!)

Here's another from Stephen's photothon in Sri Lanka... if you've never met me in person, don't be fooled. I'm not actually 8 feet tall and overweight, I just look like I am when standing next to Sri Lankan women. I forgive you, Bati!



I also finally met the Singaporean owner of our factory and spent one very interesting evening throwing back sake and singing "Sweet Home Alabama" with he and his Taiwanese business friends. Yes, my job is the best. :)

I have to stay mum about my post-SL activities for the moment. Let's just say we took another trip to the northeast, had more wonderful meetings with buyers, and are working our tails off to take School House national!


Your Devoted T-Shirt Saleswoman,
Rachel

A Big Day

I arrived in Sri Lanka on Wednesday and visited the factory with the one and only, Mr. Upali Weerakoon, for the first time on Friday. A year after meeting him and after so many challenges standing in the way of our dream of opening Sri Lanka's first living wage factory, I can only describe it as an out-of-body experience. When we arrived, the employees at JK Apparel Lanka (Private) Limited, our factory partner, were lined up on the street to greet us. I received a garland of flowers and we raised the School House, JK, and South Asia (our fabric mill) flags in honor of the occasion.

Driving down to Pugoda with Upali...


Raising the flag...


With Kumar Kuberan, Director of JK Apparel...


With Kumar and Keerthi "Eagle Eye" Silva, School House's Quality Assurance Manager...


I feel comfortable calling it the most amazing day of my life so far. I am so fortunate and School House is so fortunate to have JK on our team. And of course, none of it would be possible without Upali. To think of myself a year ago, and where we are today, just blows my mind... I have seen a dream realized already that some people spend their lifetimes trying to achieve. I know that I have dozens of people in my life, from my parents and sister to Upali and Colleen, to thank for it.

One of my favorite Sinhala phrases is also one of the most commonly used expressions... prounced roughly like "mama gee-heen enn-nahn." It means "I will go and come back" and is a way of saying goodbye. Every time I come and go to Sri Lanka I think of it and what it means, what it implies... it makes goodbyes so much better to tie them in with the thought of returning. I'm never leaving Sri Lanka, just going and coming back whenever I have the chance.

xo

Rachel

A&B Store Fixtures

This place is amazing. Thousands of square feet of warehouse space filled with secondhand store fixtures, mannequins, hangers, and signage from the Stores That Were. School House plans on creating all of our store displays using "recycled" fixtures from A&B... because who needs to manufacture a bunch of new crap in China when you can rent a giant pick-up truck and can go treasure-hunting for Victoria's Secret's rejects?

The vintage locker God created expressly for our Duke launch...

Of Rare Books and Bulldogs...

What a wonderful couple of days for School House. Colleen and I made a trip up to New Haven, CT - home of lots of things with steeples, a well-trafficked J.Crew store, and the one and only Yale University. It was nothing short of a dreamy visit. Not only are the Yale Bookstore Managers some of the nicest folks I've ever met north of the Mason-Dixon, but we had enough time to stroll around campus and see how the Yalies live.

Let's start with what I thought was Yale's version of the Duke Chapel. Upon further inspection, however, it turns out that this building is where Yalies go to worship their bodies. That's right... it's a GYM!

Spiritual.

But our favorite building had to be the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. While the gym is the largest structure in the world to house cardio fiends, the Beinecke is the largest to house rare books. It boasts one of the 48 existing Gutenberg Bibles, the Thornton Wilder papers, translucent marble walls, and the perfect floor plan for a fancy cocktail party. (Just saying...)


The best part about designing our collection for Yale besides the extra help from Gossip Girl? Handsome Dan, their bulldog mascot. Dan is supposedly the oldest mascot in collegiate history, dating back to 1889...

Of course, I'm probably a little biased. My sister Holly's bulldog, Handsome Brutus, is the best dog on the planet (see below for evidence). Here's to hoping the Gossip Girl/Yale craze turns bulldogs into the next "It Girl" dog... Louis Vuitton is going to have to make some heavier duty doggy carriers!

Bow Wow Wow,
Rachel

It's A Small, Small World

Seeing U.S. consumer goods manufactured in the developing world is one of those experiences that makes you realize what a small world we live in (or "flat" or whatever Thomas Friedman wants to call it). I remember the first time I ever watched a video in one of my Women's Studies classes of Mickey Mouse dolls being made in China, and it gave me this strong, strange feeling that "Those don't belong there." It was jarring to see his ears being sewn on, to see some lady put tiny sweaters on him over and over and over again. We see Mickey Mouse in the Disney Store at the mall, or on a shelf at Macy's, and he's never supposed to be seen before then. In fact, brands go to elaborate lengths to make sure we don't. One of many strategies are "Brand Protection Units", which a number of big name-brand manufacturers establish to ensure companies like Victoria's Secret, Nike, etc. that B-grade merchandise will never (gasp) be put in the hands of factory employees or sold to stock buyers. Instead, manufacturers incinerate thousands of t-shirts, bras, underwear, pants, jackets, and other goods in countries where outrageous amounts of people can't afford to clothe themselves. All in the name of fashion, people!

BUT, sometimes they get out anyway. As a result, you just may find yourself riding along a busy street in Colombo, Sri Lanka, thousands of miles from a North Carolina shopping mall, and coming across a wooden cart filled with UNC-Chapel Hill hats at very, very reasonable prices.

Jersey Girls

This is yours truly with Colleen, SH Creative Director and full-time fashion minx, at the Hotel Indigo in Basking Ridge, NJ. No news yet, but I will say that we had a very wonderful meeting with a retailer that rhymes with "Farnes and Coble." After dropping Colleen off at the metro stop, I headed back to the Newark airport and nearly died on the New Jersey Turnpike approximately 4 times. That place is scary!

Baby's First Barcode?

Well, it's taken two days of measuring garments using a six inch, 90210-themed ruler and begging the nice gentleman at the UPS store to allow me to weigh underwear on his digital scale, but I've done it... we now have bar codes. The Wake Forest CMGK Deacon Tee in a size small will forever be known as 845567000007 and a lot of black vertical lines. SWEET!

Baby's First Sample

I just came across this photo and realized that this was the very first product sample I ever made...and by "made" I mean took the technical specification sheet (or "tech spec" as it's commonly called) to a local factory owner and begged him to help me out in their sample room. Of course, not much begging was necessary with none other than Mr. Upali Weerakoon by my side, who has a way of convincing everyone we meet that I'm Ivanka Trump and he, my Personal Assistant. But you'll meet him later!

Back to the story. One morning when Upali picked me up to do our usual speeding through Colombo picking out fabric swatches, meeting with factory owners, and eating our weight in rice and curry, he handed me a bag. Inside was this polo - our first sample. It was made from "stock fabric" (whatever the guy had), the embroidery was wrong, it had Tommy Hilfiger buttons, and the fit was a little off, but I burst into tears anyway. You couldn't wipe the smile from my face for about four hours. Upali of course was looking at me like "I really hope this isn't the quality she's aiming for or we're all going to be in trouble..." But it was the first time I'd ever held a piece of School House in my hands, and I couldn't believe it. For a year I'd been talking and thinking and thinking and talking about School House, but it wasn't until that day that it began to feel real.

P.S. A special thanks to Corporal Christopher Emert for his Fit Model services. :)

School House <3's North Carolina

There are a million reasons to love the Old North State - including a long list of colleges and universities whose mascots I see in my dreams - but local wrestling night in Greensboro and this guy are definitely two more.

Freshman Year

Two years ago and while a senior at Duke University, I had an idea for a collegiate apparel company that would bring fashion-forward, ethically-sourced duds to my alma mater. While it didn’t make a whole lot of sense to my fellow women’s studies majors, the idea of this brand combined everything I knew and loved – fashion, feminism, entrepreneurship, and really really good looking clothes.

Among many things I didn’t know at the time, I didn’t have the first clue about designing or making clothes, nor much of an understanding how one would go about sourcing clothing “ethically.” What were ethics in the garment industry? How could I figure out how to manufacture clothing in a socially responsible way? Where was I going to find a gazillion dollars to do all of this?

So, I did like a good college student would do and applied for a Fulbright grant to research ethical fashion in Sri Lanka, a country in the midst of an international campaign to market itself as an “ethical” source of apparel in a competitive global sourcing environment. I was fortunate enough to get the grant and find myself thousands of miles from home on a tiny, teardrop-shaped island off the southeast coast of India.

In Sri Lanka, I started out in a cubicle at the offices of MAS Holdings, one of Victoria’s Secret’s top suppliers, interviewing mid-level management and not feeling like I was getting what I came for. So I left and started out on my own. Within a couple of months, I was knee-deep in the garment industry underground, learning everyone’s dirty secrets from my confidant and business partner and building a first class/third world brand we call SCHOOL HOUSE from the ground up. We haven’t looked back since.

With a year under my belt and a few months until the big launch, this blog will chronicle both the people and places School House has seen so far and tell our stories-in-the-making. You’ll meet people like the Three Amigos, our fearless trim suppliers in Baltimore, and Kumar, the Indian-expat-in-Sri Lanka who believed in a crazy white lady with big hair and an even bigger idea. I’ll post photos and videos from our living wage factory, the fabric mill where all those devil heads get printed on miles of fleece, and from my 17 hour road trips to sell t-shirts to universities...

Hope to hear from you!
xo Rachel