The Blooming of
Thoughts
SPRING /22
Part l

WHY WILL EVERYTHING BE THIS WAY?

During one of our photoshoots, when photographer Erika Maja stopped by our atelier and walked down the stairs into the basement of our sample workshop, she gasped:

“Oh my, how beautiful!” she called out to me…

For a moment, I paused. What on earth could she have seen there — among the heavy rolls of fabric, towers of folded boxes, and stored photoshoot props?

I rushed down the stairs and saw her standing by the long racks where our patterns gently sway.

“How beautiful! What a story! There are so many of them!” said the photographer who so obediently lays our collections into photographs, as she touched the rustling brown paper “fragments.”

I tucked that little gasp into a corner of my heart and promised myself that at the first opportunity, I would bring it into the light of day.

And when you carry something in your heart, thoughts begin to flutter like windmills — how to dress an idea in the most fitting “garment” and send it out on a date with your eyes.

So after a few half-asleep stages, a few mornings when sleep ran away earlier than usual… the thoughts crowding my head were lined up.

“The main prop of this collection will be our STORY,” I clapped my hands.

And the “fluffing” of V&V’s story sheets began.

I felt so many good emotions. I remembered so much.

Here’s the collection when freshly “baked” Patricija was left on photoshoot day with her dad, sweating buckets.

Here’s the collection when we photographed in a studio for the first time — and when I looked away from the pictures, I remember that insanely sweet feeling: wow… look how much we’ve already achieved.
Now it seems unbelievably funny.

Here’s the collection when we were caught in winds the likes of which we had never seen before.

And that one — the collection that sold out overnight.

And another — whose launch day coincided with our newly built showroom crashing.

Preparing this collection, I scooped up memories by the handful.

Some were joyful, cozy, family-filled.
Others came with, “Oh wow, what a confident beauty is smiling from these photos.”
Others were sprinkled with sentiment: “How tiny big brother Do was,” “how funny Pa looked,” “how barely visible little My was.”

Some were salted with failures, God knows where those little “oops” came from:
“We’re sorry, but we won’t finish sewing in time.”
“The fabric is stuck at the factory.”
“The zippers are delayed.”
“When we unrolled the fabric, we saw it was defective. The wrong shade. The wrong stretch…”

Others were tangled in challenges:
“How will we photograph Summer at +9°C?”
“How will we stand in a wool coat and thick scarf at +32°C?”
“How will we organize a photoshoot when lockdown suddenly happens in the countryside?”

There were photoshoots after which I drove home wiping tears. Not from happiness.

There were ordinary days when I wanted to kick life where it hurts.

There were minutes when I intensely used my learned technique of counting to ten. When ten didn’t work, I counted to twenty.

Never once have I regretted that it was better to hold back what I wanted to scream in the first second, than to say what I might have said in the twentieth.

More than once my phone has rung with the words:
“Sit down, V…”
And that 101% guaranteed nothing good.

There were emails I wished I could close and pretend I had dreamed.

There were situations when, after switching my mind into turbo mode… I admitted, “I don’t know what to do.”

There were days redeemed by the golden rule: “This too shall pass.”

But…

With such a baggage of “oops,” “sit down,” “sorry, but…,” “we failed,” “it didn’t work out”…

I would never trade it for a story where everything ONLY BLOOMS. ONLY SMELLS SWEET. ONLY DRAWS ADMIRING GASPS.

I love my twelve years of intense everyday life.

With all the failures. The defects. The nerve battles.

With the lessons learned, the experience gained, the patience grown, the feelings and relationships built.

And if one day someone appeared, waved a magic wand, and returned me to 2009 — offering me a choice: a V&V story sprinkled with petals, or the one I am holding in my arms in 2022…

I wouldn’t hesitate for a second.

I would choose the more difficult version.

Knowing firmly that it is exactly that which raised my “baby” into an honest business.

Where everything — down to the very last thread —

is explained not by business textbooks,

but by humanity and heart.

The day before the photoshoot, I packed rulers, measuring tapes, sketches, fabrics, patterns, catalogs, threads, buttons, labels into boxes — and kept pausing, wandering through the meadows of “Dear God, how precious and close all of this is to me.”

I invite you there too.

Roll up your trousers.
Kick off your shoes.
Let your hair down.

And… give me your hand.

Together, we will run into our 12th SPRING.

Mua,
V.