And I didn't even have a photo of my real ability to turn my apartment upside down...

So, in the midst of the chaos of my living room, among a thousand scraps of paper, gouache and chalk, I welcome inspiration, as if touched by grace. I myself I stand behind my sheets and it comes like a flow. It can last for days or a few hours; I haven't mastered that yet. One day, I'd love to have a studio where I could spread out, without tidying up at the end. With no one to judge my mess. A room of my own, a continuity of my gestures. For a long time, I thought me time to be more present to creation, but today I think I lack space. Because the hours I spend behind screens, I could spend in my own room, creating things, if everything was there, ready to be used...

I'd like to tame these moments, but I don't have enough space. myself guilty of having so much fun during these moments of creation, as if it were too simple and too beautiful, and that I'd integrated (in the wrong way) that being an entrepreneur had to rhyme with difficulty. It's amazing how conditioned we can be by the world around us, as if where there's pleasure, there's necessarily something wrong... I'm learning to myself to get rid of that. For a long time, I've been searching for my place as founder/artistic director/president. I think that deep down, I was afraid of allowing myself to be solely creative for a certain period of time and forsaking the other roles that come with being an entrepreneur. I could feel guilty about staying at home to draw for a week. I felt like I was letting my team down when I was having the time of my life alone with my colors, my drawings, the stories in my head. But no, I was creating the fuel to feed the machine.

In reality, inspiration is very impalpable - and my process changes from one collection to the next. I may come across a color combination in a magazine. Place a clementine on a pink sofa. Stroll for afternoons through a fine bookshop in search of the Epiphany. Meet a sunny person who me discover a film. There have been collections where I've spent a lot of hours on Pinterest, but I've me realize that today, that's less the case. Time of my Lifewas an Instagram collection, clearly a condensation of the colors recorded in my application. For Paris de coeur the mood board was my photos, but the basic idea was more about the product, and all those sartorial grails we're looking for, the pinched pants in suit fabric, the trench coat, grandpa's little checks etc...

Today, we have a sustained rhythm, and in fact the frequency of our collections has been revised a little, to bring out three major collections a year. In January, April and September, then to punctuate these three major collections there will be mini capsules to complement them. Producing fewer pieces more often. It's a new rhythm that we're going to introduce, with a small, hyper-colored capsule that will awaken the spirit of the brand. Paris de coeur in October.

To explain the creative process a little more, I wanted to show you a chart we all made together at our "seminar" last June. The purpose of this graphic was to explain to each of the people who work here, and to future recruits, who does what in the company. What I love about Make My Lemonade is our agility to get things done quickly, and since June, this chart has changed again. But I thought it would be interesting to share it with you to help you understand how our clothes are made.

March 2019, production tracking chart in the studio, so everyone knows where we stand.

 Season after season, we try to get a little further ahead on our retro planning. Retro planning is the lifeblood of our business. It's the ideal launch date. Then we remove :

• one week of set-up time at our logistician's in Rodez,
• an additional week of transport from our workshops to logistics,
• three or four weeks of production,
• one week of transport for our materials and supplies,
• three or four weeks to manufacture our fabric prints,
• and during those weeks, we have to create new prototype models, technical files, analyze old collections, and that's how we get the date I have to hand in my designs and garments.

Mind you, if we're sometimes behind schedule, it's not just because I've been cleaning my oven rack. But what we've learned is that nothing ever goes according to plan. NOTHING. A truck lost, unreachable, for 3 days between Belgium and France, a whole box received of dresses mounted on the reverse side of the fabric, embroidery placed on the back... One of our major projects at the moment is to get ahead of our schedules so that we can be more proactive in absorbing the little hiccups, so that everything runs smoothly for us and for you.

Today, if we were to take a photograph of the life of Make My Lemonade, we're still too small and a little fragile to limit my role to that of Artistic Director. I have to put my hand in the engine regularly to help with: relations with the manufacturers / recruitment and human resources / painting and odd jobs of all kinds / organizing the life of the company / community management etc... And then I like it, mixing and matching.even if it me de-focus my added value, for the time being I have the feeling that it also sets an example for my colleagues, that mutual support is one of my company's strong values and that the common goal is more important, that it's better to play to win the match than to boost your personal statistics. I think it's a necessary step when you set out to touch everything, to better delegate, and also to discover and highlight what makes us profoundly different. happy.se. And do all you can to find the time and space to do it as often as possible.