The True Story of LabelHorde & the Arizona Fashion Foundation

By Angela Johnson

Recent changes in our organization, along with our first negative write up, has compelled me to tell the entire history, truth and background behind LabelHorde Fashion/Arizona Fashion Foundation and how and why it was started. LabelHorde/AFF is essentially, a directory of Arizona Fashion Industry professionals with a public forum and events calendar. It was created for the community by members of the community.

I’d like to start out with the reason we wanted to create LabelHorde in the first place, which stems back to my background…so I think it is important to mention. I am starting from the beginning and giving a very in depth story about how this all happened because I want people to know the history behind it from here on out as we move forward. This is the same information that Joe Watson from the New Times interviewed me about and told me he was going to write and instead chose to take a lower road and write gossip. I expect that the usual nay Sayers will comment on the fact that I am including my history and accomplishments as self promotion and I acknowledge that. But at the same time, I hope that the majority of readers are capable of seeing the importance of including my background for credibility purposes. I’d also like to comment that if it weren’t for my ability to self promote, there wouldn’t be a LabelHorde in the first place. I also want to explain EVERY DETAIL of how and why LabelHorde exists because I do not want to have to continue to explain my intentions and hear gossip about people who are "anti-LabelHorde" because they are ignorant to its purpose. It is simply crazy to be "anti" something that was built to benefit YOU and I’m hoping that if I explain everything in simple words, everyone will understand it better. I also want to make sure I give everyone credit for their part in this whole process along the way. I always have given credit to everyone who has helped me further my career when I am interviewed for articles, and if it gets unpublished its because the publication chose not to publish it. This way, I can include everything I want to say. Now it’s my turn to say it in my words and clear up any gossip, assumptions and untruths and tell the real story behind LabelHorde and why it is so important to me and a few hundred other people involved in it.

I am not a writer, nor do I claim to be, so I will not attempt to write this in a manner that would normally be viewed as an acceptable format for an article and I will not put anyone through the torture of trying to edit such a long story. So bare with me and here goes…

LabelHorde was formed because I had acquired a lot of contacts with local designers, models, hair stylists, makeup artists, photographers, boutiques, and other fashion professionals and

• thought it would be selfish if I hogged all of the contacts up for just my own benefit

• thought that if all of these people had contact with each other they could benefit from that and grow their businesses easier and

• I was getting A LOT of opportunities offered to me to participate in various shows, write ups, and other things and many people were also asking me if I "knew of any designers who made…blah blah blah" or if "I knew of any models looking for work" or if "I knew of any boutiques that would carry local designers stuff", etc… I figured that if I created a directory, that everyone in the fashion industry in Arizona could be listed in, they could research the answers to these questions themselves and wouldn’t need to ask me anymore.

This is how it happened…

I was born in Phoenix, Arizona and raised in Scottsdale and graduated from NAU with a degree in Speech Communications. I then moved to LA and went to FIDM and graduated with honors in Fashion Design. I worked for the Beastie Boys label X-Large and Sonik Youth’s Label X-Girl as a cutter and quickly moved up to Assistant Design and then started doing Design and then eventually became the Production Manager. I also started a line called Monkeywench while working there with a friend from school and an actress named Christy Clark who played Carrie Brady on Days of Our Lives. We sold our line internationally and it was worn by several celebrities like Pam Anderson, Tommy Lee, Christina Applegate, Quentin Tarantino, Leonardo DiCaprio, Tori Spelling, Leann Rimes, Nicki Cox, Jeremy London, Lisa Rinna, Kevin Connely, the entire cast of Days of Our Lives, and on TV shows Jesse, Beverly Hills 90210, Soul Train in Japan, the Pat Bullard Show and Days of Our Lives and featured in many publications like Seventeen, Warp, Girl's Life, Sportswear International, Vice, WWD, J-14, Electric Ink, Fresh and Tasty, Barracuda and on the cover of Fashion West. This was a mass produced clothing line. Now I make custom designs which I enjoy much more. So when the New Times story touched on the fact that the designers in Arizona only move here or stay here because we can’t make it in the real industry…or that you can’t make it here as a designer, it is untrue and, in fact, completely opposite. I, for one, left a successful career to come here to take care of my Grandfather after my Grandmother died. Now I’m trying to make lemonade out of lemons and use my experience in the "real" industry to help create some kind of fashion environment that people in the local "industry" can utilize to pursue or continue their fashion careers from here instead of having to move to LA or NY. That’s all. There’s no ulterior motive here. Just logical thinking and a passion to help other people and a willingness to share resources, knowledge, experience and PR.

In regard to my Grandparents, they are the reason I love fashion in the first place. I moved back to AZ in 1999 because my Grandmother passed away and my Grandfather needed someone to take care of him. My Grandparents and I were very close and were like parents to me. My Grandfather was U. S. Attorney stationed in the Panama Canal Zone and because of that, they used to be part of high society in Panama, attending Governor’s Balls and throwing important parties. I lived there in Panama with them for a short time when I was little. I’ve got the coolest photos of them jet setting all over the world with important political people. I’ve even got a photo of me dancing with an actual Prince, etc…. My Grandmother loved this lifestyle and used to throw huge parties that were often covered in the newspapers and attended by major politicians and other VIPs. I have newspaper clips from The Panama Canal, Arizona Republic, Maine and NY of my Grandparents parties at their homes in the 1950’s and 60’s. They were well known in town for throwing these awesome society type events when they returned from Panama. And because of her role as hostess of these parties, my Grandmother was very much into her image and what she wore. Fashion became a very big part of her life and she had a lot of clothing and jewelry custom made for her from all over the world. She had some crazy styles. She held on to most of it her entire life. She had 4 closets full and racks in her laundry room of clothes when she died. My mom, my sister and I lived in the same house with my Grandparents as I was growing up from age 5 to age 14. So, I had always been exposed to my Grandmother’s love for unique fashion and believe my love for it comes from her. It was in my blood. I just didn’t know I could have a career in it until later in life…after my first degree in communications. So, I attended FIDM in LA to realize my potential.

When I moved back here, I tried to continue doing Monkeywench from here, but it was too difficult because it was mass produced which used to keep me running around the LA garment district almost every other day when I lived in LA and I couldn’t do that from here. It was also difficult to put in as much time as I was with a new baby….Sarkis, my son, was born in 1999. So, I made the decision to quit producing the line and looked for a job working in the fashion industry in AZ instead. It was difficult as I soon discovered there was no actual fashion industry to speak of and really no job opportunities designing or in production here.

But, I searched really hard. My grandfather had saved every newspaper article he could find on the local fashion industry and they were all about boutiques. There was only one that included a list of local designers. I called everyone on the list to see if they were hiring. Turned out, most of those were actually really boutique owners and not full time designers and didn’t have actual manufacturing facilities and didn’t need employees except for retail sales jobs. But, luckily one of them was an actual design trio called Forma. It was three guys. Two guys were the design team and the third guy named Robert Rossi, was the PR guy. I called and spoke to Robert. Turned out we both used to live in Silverlake in LA which is this really cool up and coming neighborhood where all the new artists, designers, musicians were moving too. It is like a cute little small town right outside of downtown L.A. It looked kind of like the hood when we first moved there because it was sort of a hidden secret and just starting to become an artsy, cool place to live. But it’s been so over publicized that now you can’t even get a two bedroom house there for under a million dollars. Robert and I totally hit it off because of this connection. So, he invited me down to their studio to talk. Turns out, Forma was too still too small to afford to hire anyone at the time, but they wanted to meet me and I thought it would be a great networking opportunity. We totally bonded and being a PR man, Robert would use my Monkeywench stuff whenever he needed clothing for shoots/shows/events that Forma didn’t work for. He had me on the News a few times and got my name out there a lot. It was awesome. He also introduced me to Dennita Sewell at the Phoenix Art Museum.

At this time, Dennita was having these events called Salon Saturdays at the Museum where anyone interested in Fashion could come to the museum to learn about different pieces in their collection. It attracted a lot of local designers who were sort of sitting dormant like I was. This is where I met Susan Di Staulo and Megan Finnerty from Yes. Dennita decided to organize a show at Monorchid to show the designs of all the local designers who wanted to participate. That’s where I met a bunch of other local designers and student designers.

At the same time, I had actually found a fashion job teaching fashion design at New School for the Arts and had been creating designs under my own name for fun. Megan Finnerty wrote a couple of stories on me and my designs in YES. One night I was at a restaurant opening that my PR friend Robert Rossi invited me to and I left my business cards (they were screen printed on hot pink fabric) there hoping that someone might end up picking them up. Turns out, someone did pick them up. It was a DJ named Mr. Peabody. He had been helping Robert Sentinnery of Java organize the Funk n Fashion events at SMoCA (which were similar to the SMoCA Nights runway shows that we do, but they didn’t have local designers. Instead, they showed clothes from boutiques and other stores.) and was just beginning to work with Leslie Oliver on the next event. Leslie had come up with the idea to showcase a local designer in the next one. The day after the restaurant opening, she was reading one of the newspaper articles that Megan wrote on me and was trying to figure out how to get a hold of me because it didn’t include my contact information in the article. At the same time, Mr. Peabody walked in to her office and handed her my business card. It was fate! So, that was the first SMoCA show that I did and it was all my own stuff…about 40 pieces.

After that show, the committee asked me if I wanted to continue to help with the other shows. The idea was thrown around that I do the next one, but it was so hard for me to come up with 40 pieces for that first show, that I didn’t think I could pull off creating another huge line in only a couple of months for the next one. So, we decided to include other designers and since I had recently met a lot of other designers, I offered to locate them and organize the next fashion show with pieces from my collection and their collection together. We decided to have 10 designers with each one doing 10 pieces. That is when I contacted Susan and the other designers I had in the first show. I met some of them through Dennita, some of them through work, and some of them through word of mouth and networking.

The show was a hit! It was covered by nearly every publication in town before and after and was attended by tons of people! After that show, designers and models started contacting me and the museum wanting to be in the next one. So, I started a waiting list. They sent me photos of their work and some were students and some were designers who were transplanted from major fashion capitals, but couldn’t make a living as a designer in AZ since there wasn’t an actual industry here. Some were newly graduated, some were retired, some made ball gowns and some made street wear, some were really talented and some were not. It was and still is a very mixed bunch. The list grew quickly. A few of the original designers in the first SMoCA decided to start doing more fashion shows since the SMoCA show was such a success. These shows started getting a lot of press too. So, my list grew even more. This is when I started to think what a shame it was that there were so many designers in town and no way for them to make a living doing what they loved due to the lack of manufacturing resources and the lack of something to unite everyone and put us all in touch with each other. There was no actual industry, but so many people who could work in one if there was. All of these people’s talents were going to waste doing other jobs to make a living when they all had skills in the fashion industry.

So, I came up with an idea. I wanted to open a boutique that could sell the designs of all of these designers. I approached Daisy Rast because she was a co-worker that I had been getting to know at the time and I was very impressed by her professionalism and drive. She had similar interests. Turns out, she had been thinking the same exact thing and was going to approach me about it too! So, we came up with the name LabelHorde and began looking for a space for the store. We wanted the store to be a place that showcased local designers with an unbiased eye and featured styles across the board…from contemporary women’s wear to deconstructed/reconstructed juniors; from men’s wear to kid’s clothes; from screened T-shirt companies to impeccably designed couture. We wanted to have a place that represented everything that Arizona designers did. We also wanted to have studio space in the store that was dedicated to the designers so that they could utilize it as their own. So many designers couldn’t afford to have their own studios and were arranging to meet their customers for fittings in their own homes or even at various public facilities like restaurants and coffee shops! Creating a public studio equipped with cutting table, sewing machines, pattern paper and pattern tools, and even a fashion library that could also be used for education, was the perfect way to help the local designers raise the bar. We were planning to pay for it with the sales from the clothing in the store. We also thought we could raise money through advertising sales by also printing a publication that would act as a directory uniting and listing all fashion oriented companies and professionals in AZ.

As we were in the process of finding a practical and affordable space for the studio/boutique, we found that someone else had already come up with the idea of opening a boutique that carried all local designers’ goods. Of course we were a little bummed out that someone else had thought of it first because we were really excited and had invested a lot of time planning and researching, but we quickly got over it because we realized that even though we weren’t going to be the ones who did it…at least someone was doing it and as long as it was happening it would benefit the community, no matter who did it. So we focused on creating the directory only… knowing that it would provide a way for all the designers, models, contractors, stylists, photographers and boutiques in town to contact each other and utilize each other’s services. We knew this would be helpful to all fashion professionals in AZ and those wishing to be fashion professionals in AZ.

So, we started LabelHorde Magazine. The magazine was a directory broken up into four sections….Designers, Hair and Makeup Stylists, Boutiques and Miscellaneous (which contained models, photographers, fabric stores, contractors, schools, etc…) Each issue, we would write an article about one person or business from each directory section to help publicize their business and to fill up the magazine, making it different each issue so that it wouldn’t just be a directory. This way, we could pay for the printing of it with advertising money. We didn’t want to charge the people in the directory to be listed in it because 1) most people wouldn’t pay to be listed in a directory/magazine if they hadn’t ever seen it before and didn’t know if it would stay in business because it was new, and 2) many designers and other fashion professionals did not have the money to invest in a directory listing when they were struggling trying to keep a fashion business going in a state with no fashion industry and 3) if it was free to be listed, we could list big businesses like Joann Fabrics or Hancock Fabrics who might otherwise not be interested in paying for a listing in a local publication and we wanted to be sure to have EVERYONE and every business that had anything to do with fashion in there so it would actually be useful to everyone and 4) we thought we could sell enough advertising to pay for it. The printing bill was about $8000 an issue because we chose to use high quality paper and binding. This was also a calculated decision. We didn’t want to introduce the local fashion community to the rest of Arizona in a cheaply made, poor quality publication because we didn’t want readers to have the impression that our industry was poor quality. We wanted to impress because we thought it would attract more advertisers, the right audience and make a good impression. Yes, it was a grass roots effort, but it didn’t have to look that way. There are some very prestigious fashion businesses in town that we wanted to attract and we knew that we wouldn’t attract them on newsprint or in a staple bound publication. We also chose to make the publication a unique size in order to make it stand out on the news stands from all of the other local publications.

Unfortunately, we discovered that selling advertising was much, much, harder than we had ever expected and we struggled to print each issue. There were just too many other local publications asking for advertising dollars from the same businesses. And we weren’t able to successfully find an actual advertising sales rep to do the job, so we relied on individuals who did it as a favor, or did it on commission only. This was unsuccessful for us and we had to come up with another way to raise money in order to stay in business. Our printing bill was about $8000 an issue. In addition, we found out that operating a business of this magnitude was taking a lot more time and resources than we had ever expected. We were working on it way more than the usual 40 hours a week that is demanded by a regular full time job, but we weren’t getting paid.

So, we had to get creative. We decided to organize fashion shows as a way to bring in money. The SMoCA shows were so successful and the other shows that all of the local designers were having, were also getting a very good turn out, so we began to do the same. We organized a series of trunk shows at a funky little bar/hotspot/hangout in Scottsdale called Mickey’s Hangover. They already had a good quantity of regular traffic and their outside patio lent itself out perfectly for a mini trunk show style atmosphere. Jake Saady and Jenn Lafferty, two PR professionals, had already been organizing trunk shows there before we got involved and it had a good turnout, so we saw this as a great opportunity to get the local designers some sales and exposure and PR and to make some money to print the directory. We had an arrangement based on bar sales, so it was imperative that we had a good turn out each time in order for us to make any money. It was cool for a while and while not all designers would sell stuff, many of them ended up selling a lot of merchandise at these things. Designers would come and support other designers and the camaraderie was amazing! There was a real bonding going on with local designers who were supporting each other working together. It was a totally opposite atmosphere than what you hear about the competitive and catty fashion industries in other fashion capitals. We really felt a sense of accomplishment.

But, a trunk show didn’t offer the excitement that a runway show did and eventually many designers stopped coming to support each other and started to have their own runway shows on the same night as our event. This ended up affecting the attendance drastically and in turn, the bar sales went down dramatically. We were no longer making any money off of organizing these events, yet, we still had to put in the time and effort to arrange them. So we had to discontinue them. We were very disappointed and found it very disheartening that so many designers would rather have runway shows rather than trunk shows where they could actually sell their merchandise.

That’s when we had to come up with plan B. This time we chose to start organizing runway shows since those seemed to be the thing that people wanted to attend. So, we came up with a great way to support the designers and make money at the same time. We decided that we would organize a runway show for our featured designer of the month that was being covered in the magazine and we would charge a fee to get in which would pay for the show and the rest would go toward the printing and the business. By doing this, the designer would be getting free promotion for their show (from our vast and growing email list of 3500 people, our contacts with local magazines that were always asking us who and what was the next cool thing to cover in the local fashion world, our online calendar and our flyer distribution to over 300 locations in town).

By doing this, the designers would stop needing to have all of the numerous little bar shows because we were offering to give them their own huge individual showcase for their season lines to encourage them to stop producing random pieces and start producing season lines instead. Plus our shows were only in galleries and theaters. We also would cover the venue, the refreshments, the sound and lighting and DJ and runway/staging. The only thing the designer would have to worry about is their clothes and models. We even tried to have the featured stylist of the month be the one to do the hair and makeup at the show each time. We thought that it was a great opportunity for the designers, as it is pretty expensive to pay for a venue, promotion, staging, lighting, sound for your own show, and that the designers would be excited to come and support each other again and see what they could look forward to when it came time for their show. Unfortunately, this was not always the case. We had some very successful shows and we had some very unsuccessful shows. Our feelings were that if we always could count on the other designers, models, stylists, etc… to come to these shows, then they would all be successful, but this did not happen. And no matter how many times we stressed the importance of this, it didn’t seem to matter. Finally, after a couple of shows that cost us way more than we made at the door, we were forced to discontinue this too. People stopped showing up because there were still all kinds of other runway shows being organized all over the place for entertainment at bars and other venues and it really started to over saturate things. Designers were having show after show with the same pieces instead of creating an actual Fall line or a Spring line and having their own shows to feature their new lines each season (which was what we were trying to give to them for free). So, people didn’t see the need to attend our shows because it was so easy to just "see the next show" at the local bar. People didn’t realize the importance of the featured designer shows. (continued in next blog entry)