“Momentum is everything. Get to the end as if the devil himself were breathing down your neck and poking you in the butt with his pitchfork. Believe me, he is.” — Excerpt from the book Do the work, by Steven Pressfield

It was my big moment. I was about to go out on stage and greet the spectators of my runway show. But as I stood backstage, all of a sudden I had a terrible desire to throw up.

I tried to fight it off, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop the nausea from washing over me. In desperation, I ran to the washroom that fortunately was only some meters away and that was it. My body did what it had to do. I washed myself, put one of my honey candies in my mouth and ran backstage again. It was my time to go out, as all the models were almost finished walking the catwalk, but I decided to wait for the first model to come back from stage, took her hand, told her “come with me” and we went out to greet the audience. As soon as I stepped on the catwalk, I felt so suddenly happy and relieved that I even was able to blow a kiss to the audience, enjoying so much their applauses and hearing my beloved family and friends cheering at me. At that very instant, I felt every difficult moment that I lived in my journey of creating this collection was worth it.

But, why I was feeling so nauseous precisely just before going out on stage if I wasn’t sick at all in the whole day? It was my totally normal physical response to the mental and emotional pressure that I had been putting on myself, not just from early in the morning on the very day of the show, but during months before.

When we are stressed, our bodies release a hormone called cortisol. This hormone is designed to help us deal with short-term stress, but when we are constantly under stress, our bodies can’t keep up with the demand and we start to feel sick.

I was very stressed because I was so afraid. Afraid of what exactly? Afraid of showing my creations to the world and getting a defeatist feedback? Afraid of feeling like a failure after being negatively criticized? Following is a quote from Marianne Williamson’s book A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of “A Course in Miracles” that perfectly explains my real fear.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

With all and this big fear I had to honor my commitment and finish my project. But my way to reach this goal, hasn’t been an easy one at all. On the contrary, it has been filled not only with very hard work, but also with great efforts to overcome my fears and my own resistance to move forward. At the beginning of my project it was really hard especially because every time I sat down to work on it, something else would come up and distract me. During my work time, everything seemed to be more important than my work, from cleaning the house, cooking, passing days getting immerse in researching a lot of every little thing I had to do, to tweeting, scrolling down in social media, walking my dog many times a day, finding long TV shows to watch, etc.

As if all these excuses weren’t enough to keep me from working at the beginning stage, the few times I managed to get some work done, I used to judge myself so hard that any design I would sketch or any work I achieved to do seemed to be worthless for showing to the world. It always had to be better, it had to be perfect. Logically, with these attitudes and self boicot actions my stress was just mounting with every week and every month that passed until I made the decision to stop judging my work, stop trying to do it all by myself and start looking for brilliant people to form a team to help me achieve these big steps that would lead me to the finish my project. I needed progress, not perfection.

But believe me, these big decisions, as important as they were, weren’t made magically at all. On the contrary, I had episodes of nervous colitis, neck and head aches for putting so much pressure on my jaw while I was sleeping having nightmares in which I dreamed the day of the show arrived and I hadn’t the garments ready for the models to wear.

It took too many times for me to refuse to go out and do any recreational activities with family or friends because of having to work even on weekends, staying cooped up at home, and ending up not really completing any of my work.

All of this drained my energy to the point that there were days when I didn’t have enough motivation and just getting out of bed and doing my most basic activities of the day left me exhausted. All out of fear. Because the more important, challenging, and exciting my goal was, the greater my fear and resistance to taking the steps toward it. Can you relate?

To my great fortune, my enormous desire and motivation to create a beautiful display to show off my incredible designs, was always bigger than my fear and than the obstacles I encountered on the way. Thanks to this, I managed to achieve precious moments of work, in which I took such decisive steps that led me to a successful show, in which very beautiful and talented models gave life to my creations, both for the photographic and video sessions that we had with the gorgeous and talented Sahara Davis and Elluz Cruz, as well as on the runway with the eight gorgeous models and all the hairstyle and makeup artists from the Vancouver Fashion Week team.

All of this with the essential support of:

• Rodika Goreea, my experienced product developer and production partner from Fashion Studio #5
• Ian Kobylanski, such talented photographer from Koby Photography
• Shahaab Oshidary and Felix Soong, wonderful and gifted video producers from Starlide Inc.
• Hairstyle and makeup artist Lana Obolenskaya from Grand Care.
• My very favorite DJ, Max Oazo, whose beautiful music accompanied my introduction and background videos of the runway show
• Deanna Cook, my mentor from Factory 45, who has wisely guided me and kept me accountable
• My sweetheart and amazing husband Sebastián, whose support has always been so extraordinary and determinant for me to achieve these goals
• My beloved children Camille and Stephan, my main cheerleaders and precious motors of my life
• My dear siblings than have been my example of persistence, as well as my darling friends Susy, Claudia, Rita, Tania, Itzel Ch, Marce, Ileana, Keyla, Itzel V, and Miatta, who have always inspired me with their cheers and precious advice
• My much admired authors Steven Pressfield and Clarissa Pinkola Estés, who became my best advisors during my daily sessions of listening to their audiobooks while walking with my beloved dog Frijolito. The clarity and wisdom with which they describe the complex processes that we creative people, designers and artists experience every day, as well as their wise and practical advices to face fears and overcome resistance, have been hugely useful for me to reach my goals

My creations for the runway show.

In November 2021, I attended the International Apparel and Textile Fair in Dubai. The unique looks that I presented in SS23 Vancouver Fashion Week, like the marvelous Emirates that inspired me to create them, show with captivating colors, fabric, textures, and shapes, a beautiful and cohesive display of the seductive mix of desert, sea and city, the forms of the impressive mosques, the uniqueness of some of the most special buildings on Earth, the aesthetics of luxury, as well as a few of the attributes that Emiratis embody every day, such as beauty, hard work, resilience, and strength.

In the VFW runway show we saw the female gorgeous models wearing my signature black retro T-shirt screen printed with an emblem that reads “#BeAPalmTree – Bend, Don’t Break” as a call for embodying one of the great lessons we as humans can get from the Emirati desert: the strength and resilience of date palms, that in the midst of a great storm may be bent so far over that they’re almost touching the ground, but when the wind finally stops, those palm trees bounces right back, even stronger than before.

In the colors of the emblem, we enjoy the beauty and originality of the SS23 season palette in the forms of a Sundial sun, Verdigris bending palms, Luscious Red and Sundial dunes, and a Digital Lavender sunset, pairing the T-shirt selectively in such a versatile way that we can appreciate and imagine a variety of activities in shorts, in elegant business casual pants, or elevating the basics of
the retro tee combined with the sophistication of the classic tweed pencil skirt.

An elegant two-piece turquoise-blue tweed suit composed by a blazer and a pencil skirt, a quilted mini dress and a beautiful long jacket evoke the beautiful colors and shapes found in the impressive Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi, an architectural marvel and an inspiring entity that led María Correa to design the circular-shaped hips, puffed sleeves and padded shoulders resembling
shapes like the domes of the mosque.

Finally, as showstoppers, we could see two more gorgeous garments: the stretch taffeta jumpsuit which shapes draw the very silhouette of the inspiring tallest building on Earth, The Burj Khalifa, as well as the Burj Al Arab stretch taffeta gown which, resembling the emblematic sail-shaped Hotel in Dubai, shows a total cohesion with the rest of the collection.

The runway show video:

The articles and pictures published in Vogue Mexico magazine:

https://www.vogue.mx/moda/articulo/mejores-momentos-vancouver-fashion-week-primavera-verano-2023

https://www.vogue.mx/moda/galeria/vancouver-fashion-week-primavera-verano-2023

I thank you so much for reading me and PLEASE DON’T MISS MY NEXT BLOG POST specially dedicated for you to appreciate my designs to detail through the pictures that Vancouver based photographer Ian Kobylanski from Koby Photography beautifully captured, as well as backstage and runway pictures and short videos.

With much love,