Some people stop and smell the roses. I drive around my neighborhood staring at bougainvillea. It amazes me how this one plant has so many forms.  Trimmed uniform hedges of bright pink, wild multicolored tendrils crawling through rusty iron gates,  untamed walls of purple fluorescent vines. All so different. All drawing me in to take a closer look. Beautiful and inviting and then you get closer and you hit their boundary, sharp thorns. 

I have feelings about this collection. Maybe it was the external happenings of the 2020s. Or maybe it was just me and my own personal onion peeling away. This collection helped unearth some things about myself. My natural tendency or conditioning is to work really hard and quickly. Moving at a fast pace, creating deadlines and goals,  staying in constant motion. Before I’m done the thing I am doing, my mind is already mapping out the next. Grateful for this innate striver , as it helped me build a strong foundation that led me here. But I was ready to try something different. A more easeful approach.

I arrived at a new place where I felt a need to go slow. A recalibration was calling from inside of myself, quiet and calming rhythm. “Slow is ok, let slow be”.  A reprioritization. A letting  go of the timelines I create for myself. I stopped racing to solve the problem or get to the next vision.  I stopped staying up late. I prioritized play, surf, sleep, family, friends.  I kept the day to day going, but I back-burnered all my advancement projects.

Little by little we created this. Slowly. Steadily. So many hands and hearts touched this collection. New pieces named after some of these pillars of presence. “The Juliana” , name after my surf buddy, who has taught me so much about enjoying. Making sure to fit in the joy. “The Pernilla”, my soul sister Neely, who comes to maui and we always end up having design retreats where we do nothing but work on new designs together. “The Kimmy” my auntie who left our earthly plane this year. She had an incredible way of making the mundane extraordinary. She found the zest and awe and humor in every crevice of life.

I learned to let go and lean into the process more than I ever had. I learned to trust the breaking down and that the rebuild would be stronger. By my side was the best team. Holding space for a slow unfolding.

Amber Caires on photography www.ambervisionphoto.com

Ali Downes on styling @poppipunk

Kymberly Marr on makeup

To my awesome production team, we went through a lot this year. Restructuring and learning curves , curve balls, and expansion. Thank you for staying the course and being such focused rays of light.

Enjoy and take your time..