In 2007 I started sewing one-off pieces and altering vintage clothing in my dining room to sell on ebay. I usually tell people it was a combination of my post-university-graduation-arrogance and poverty that led to my starting a clothing label, nearly an accident. I needed to pay bills asap and I’d been sewing for myself since my early teens, and selling vintage gothic/alternative pieces on ebay for years at this point. I made and listed things, they sold, made some more, they sold. Soon the pieces were going faster than I could make them.
Ebay itself was a really different place then as etsy wasn’t a thing and indie designers used livejournal heavily to promote their work to like-minded folks.
Here are some designs from our original 2007/2008 collection, they’re pretty bad in places but you can also see some that have evolved into styles we carry now! This page was used at some live events we did at the time to facilitate online purchases done in person, kind of before square and all of those programs.
In late 2008 I decided it was time to bring on some extra hands and expand to doing pieces from scratch I designed, and hoped to keep selling one off’s then as well. Ultimately I ended up dropping the one-off side of things completely before the launch of the collection (there’s a whole other essay on making that choice) and put all my eggs in the lace-trimmed basket of designs. It was a big risk but one that led to so many new and amazing paths.
I may have fallen into this business but it has become my heart and soul, and I am terribly lucky and grateful to be able to still do this now so many years later, and we have had invaluable support from our models, seamstresses, photographers, friends, and fans. Thank you for the motivation, challenges, and inspiration- I can’t wait to do more!!!
-Tae
Gloomth & the Cult of Melancholy 