I believe that if you work hard enough and do things the right way recognition will come.

The thing is you can be a great designer but you can also be lazy or not understand the other person's preferences or be more concerned about being a star than being good at what you do.

I started out doing everything on a custom scale and when that started paying the bills I started making more pieces.

I was working a corporate job for years and it always felt restrictive, it felt like I was doing something I wasn't supposed to be doing.

I was at work but my soul wasn't there, my body was there but I wasn't connecting to what I was doing. Eventually I decided to get out of there and do something I believe in.

I'm based in Atlanta so there weren't a lot of people to talk to about fashion because no one was really doing it on the scale that I wanted to do it. I had to do a lot of research on my own.

I didn't go to school for fashion, I didn't have anybody to teach me anything about fashion - that's all I knew how to do, graphic design.