Steve Jobs: A fashion icon?

Steve Jobs: A fashion icon?

It’s been a few weeks since the passing of one of the world’s greatest entrepreneurs and visionaries; Steve Jobs. It feels a little weird blogging about him in a non techy way without alluding to any of his genius inventions, the iPods, iPads, iMac and maybe iFashion someday J. This would be really interesting don’t you think….clothes that perhaps have a self washing app and you would never have to do any laundry or an app that once input into an outfit could transform itself to whatever outfit you wanted whatever the occasion (mmmhh, that however would put fashion houses like us out of business), I wonder what we would call such outfits, iTransformers?

So since Steve Jobs passing away, he has become sort of a fashion icon. How do you explain St. Croix’s (the men’s fashion label that claims to have sold Jobs his now infamous turtle necks) selling out their similar styled turtle necks at a crazy price of 175 dollars (approximately Kshs17, 500….yikes!). Waaa, we would be millionaires if we could sell all our outfits for that much. Perhaps it’s time to pursue a partnership with St. Croix *stares into space building castles*. The turtle necks have become so popular that there is now a controversy over who designed and supplied them to Jobs. According to a fashion news website, St. Croix claims that Jobs purchased roughly two dozen turtle necks annually and even occasionally called the label’s owner to tell him how much he liked them. That’s one part of the story. The other is obtained from an upcoming biography of Jobs written by Walter Isaccson. The story goes that Jobs was on a trip to Japan in the early 1980s and while there he asked Sony’s Chairman why everyone in the company wore uniforms. The chairman responded by saying that after the war, no one had any clothes and the company had to give their workers something to wear each day. This was functional and it also served as a way to bond workers to the company. Jobs loved the idea and decided he wanted the same for Apple. He called Issey Miyake who has designed uniforms for Sony and asked him to design a vest for Apple. Jobs went back with some samples and told his team that it would be great if they wore the vests but the idea got laughed off. He decided it would be nice to have a uniform for himself and Issey designed and made him about a hundred of the turtle necks in question.

Jobs, in his death has been celebrated by fashion experts such as Robin Givhan describing his style as “unquestionably efficient and banal, yet with just the tiniest hint of Steve McQueen cool”. So is Steve Jobs really a fashion icon? My take, Jobs did not care too much about what he wore as long as he was comfortable enough to get stuff done and choosing an outfit that he could wear daily took away the hassle of having to think too hard about his appearance in public. But for this exceptional gentleman, a lot about him will be celebrated including his simple sense of style.

Regards,

Fashion Entreprenuer.

The Dream Is Born

Books are amazing, books give knowledge and wisdom, books entertain, books shape thinking and books inspire among a whole lot else. The book Rich Dad, Poor Dad  (you must have heard of it if not read it and contrary to what some say, It’s not a 13 ways to get rich kinda book) caused a complete paradigm shift for me (yay! I managed to squeeze in a phrase in my first blog post that makes me sound learnedJ).It was at that point after reading the book that I decided and got almost convinced that I wanted to become an entrepreneur.That was in my second year of campus.

I went through campus studying a course that I loved but the dream of becoming an entrepreneur persisted and slowly business ideas begun to pop. However, one business idea stuck and that was of an online store. This idea itched like an ant biting in the wrong place. Ever heard the saying “The severity of an itch is inversely proportional to the ability to reach it.”If you think about this saying, it’s so true, ever had a Safari ant go up the wrong way….I digress, back to how this dream was born.

So, I leave campus and have practically nothing, no capital, no knowledge on how to run a business, only an idea and the zeal to see it through. What to do? I applied for a loan but the application got rejected. In retrospect, (another hard word, boy I’m on a rollJ) I’m kinda glad it got rejected, might have ended up in serious debt).My two cents worth, it’s not very advisable to start a business on a loan unless the money has been borrowed from friends and family who can allow you to pay it off slowly as you make the money back. That’s just my two cents worth and probably a whole other blog post. Time to come up with a game plan…..I decide to seek employment and use the money from my salary to set up the business. It worked and after months and months and months and months of saving, I was able to set up a website which we are revamping soon (it’s coming back bigger and better thanks to all your critical reviews).From my savings, I was also able to buy a sewing machine and hire space which we use as a workshop to process our custom made orders. And that’s how we (we refers to the team I work with and the support system around me) begun, our first clients are so etched in my mind.What!!!God bless them for trusting us with their orders.

It’s been an interesting journey where many tears have been shed (ye I said it, tears have been shed when the going got tough), laughter shared (it’s not all gloom) and lessons learnt (these are the most precious and once grasped they propel the business to the next level).

We are not there yet, we are still facing a myriad of challenges but we have the assurity that with God as our guide/Chairman of board we will succeed.

Did you notice the myriad? (Told you I’m on a roll but I did not want to insert this bracketed comment in an otherwise heartfelt statement).

Regards,

Fashion entrepreneur :-)