Interview with Brenda Bell

                 Interview Brenda Bell, Bell Fashions with Fashion-Schools

                             Baby and Children’s Fashion Designing

Hello Bell Fashions,

Please allow me to introduce myself, my name is Robin Wilding and I am a writer for Fashion-Schools.org. I am currently identifying fashion designers, bloggers, manufacturers, textile companies, marketers, advertisers and other fashion industry professionals across the country and interviewing representatives from each company for feature articles on Fashion-Schools. The interviews are designed to give aspiring fashion and design professionals perspective on the work being done in the industry, what skills employers value, and -from a bigger picture- to convey to them that there are many roles that can be filled (or created), and not only becoming a designer entrepreneur or working for a high-profile label.    

Once completed, the interview will be posted verbatim on our site and you would be welcome to link to our site. 

I look forward to completing an interview-based company profile on your esteemed fashion-related company.

Sincerely,

Robin Wilding

Fashion-Schools.org Writer

1. What inspired you to get into the fashion industry?

    I have always wanted to sew baby clothes since I can remember.  When I was 6 years old, my mom was outside and left me inside the house.  When she came in, I was standing at her sewing machine, which I had been told to leave alone with my finger under the foot and a needle completely thru my finger.  She decided it was time to teach me to sew. I have always loved babies and baby clothes. I made my first dress for myself when I was 8 years old.  When I had my first daughter in 1973, the race was on to sew for her.  I have always wanted to design.  Doing the production was never my joy but I sure did enjoy making the first sample.

2. What is your focus within the industry?

    My focus is 100% babies and childrens fashions.  I absolutely love exquisite children's clothing.  I am a great fan of traditional clothing and am not a fan of the new clothing that makes babies and toddlers look like grown-ups.  I manufactured clothing for 26 years only because no one would hire me to design so I had to make them myself.  Now I am doing all my products in Central America and China.

3. What type of education did it take to get you where you are today?

    No Education.  Not even a mentor, except my mother and grandmother.  My ability was a natural ability.  My grandmother would make her own patterns after looking at a child's dress in a store window and sew for her children.  My mother made all of our dresses.  I purchased books from the internet and learned to grade patterns.  I had people who worked for me that helped me learn the production line type operation.

4. How has your career path progressed over the years?

    Yes. I tried to get a job with a company in California doing free lance design. They told me they were interested and I sent them samples.  The owner of the company of Martha’s Minatures would never speak to me by phone after he received the little dresses that I had designed.  I finally got his secretary to tell me that he did receive them.  About 1 year later, I saw my designs with the name Martha's Minatures in a Children's Clothing Boutique in my town.  I started my business and decided to produce them myself.  I started with 2 sewing machines in my entrance foyer.  Six months later, I purchased an old mobile home and gutted it and started producing from that trailer.  The following year, I purchased a second one and these looked horrible in my yard but I was on a mission.  We were sewing in one trailer and pressing and shipping in the other.  In 1990, we hired a new sales rep that got us into a chain of department store.  We built a 7500 square foot building and are still located there today.

5. What is your favorite part of working in the fashion/design business?

    The designing and seeing the first proof.

6. What advice would you give to aspiring fashioniatas?

    If you have a dream, go for it.  If you want it, speak it to yourself and others.  The words you speak about yourself frame your world.

7. What school(s) does your company generally recruit new hires from?

    My best designer only has a high school education.  She has ideas running thru her head faster than I can write them down.  I think designing is a God given natural ability.

8. Do you think there is an overall increasing or decreasing need for people in the fashion industry?

    I am not sure.  There seem to be more available.  I have been to trade shows for years.  There seems like there are a lot more lines available.

9. Which roles in the fashion industry do you think will offer the best career opportunities moving forward? eg. designer, PR, entrepreneur, etc.?

    Entrepreneurs that can design will offer the best career opportunities..  It seems that most entrepreneurs in the children's clothing business are designers.  No one seems to want to hire designers.  I think the reason for that is, when they are starting their business, they cannot afford to pay a designer.

10.              What designer(s) or brand(s) influenced you the most as a creative professional?

            A line called Mary Louise Originals and also Martha's Minatures.  These were ruffled girls dresses which is what I started manufacturing.  Our line was called "Bell".  In 1990, only one company, Joseph Love, was making dresses for chubby girls.  The Loves were getting to retirement age and they suddenly closed and no one was making Chubby Dresses.  We started a line called "Daydream" and sold to chain store group in North and South Carolina.  That is when we really grew.  They were a traditional dress that was inspired by a line called "Monday's Child".  When we came out with this Chubby line, within 2 years there were numerous companies that started making these. 

11.              Do you think today's jobs in the fashion industry require more of an artist's touch or business-like ruthlessness?

            It requires both.  It is a tough business.  There is a lot of competition.  There is also a lot of dirty dealing that goes with other companies stealing your ideas.  You can come out something brand new, we came out with a new line called "Girley Girl".   No one else had anything like it on the market.  In 2 years all my competitors were doing their lines very similar.

12.              Which skills do you consider to be most critical for a career in fashion?

         I think you should everything you can.  My education, beyond high school, was business school.  I worked as an executive secretary and did not know that I would use those skills.  I have used everything that I learned there in my business.  I love grading patterns.  I can get lost in that.  I think that the most critical thing is to have vision and imagination, and have the ability to take fabrics and put them together with your ideas.

13.              What do you think the future of fashion and design holds?

            It is very hard to say.  I hope it will calm back down some.  I am so tired of all the crazy loud prints.  Sometimes I go into a department store and can hardly find anything to buy.  I sometimes say that the designers are on drugs.  I think the specialty of a garment should be in the tayloring of the garment and not the wildness of the fabric.