The Place: Houndstooth Coffee

The Cup: A lovely latte was the drink Kim selected, and I enjoyed the best drink ever, a cortado. If you’ve not had the pleasure of enjoying this dainty yet powerful cup, go now and get one.  Then come back and finish reading. You’re welcome.

Background: Several weeks back I met with April from Fabricker for Cup 15 and after our cup she suggested Kim as someone I needed to connect with.  Kim and I had to wait a bit because she was busy creating fashion garments for a designer working on the F1 event that Austin hosted.  How cool is that?!?!  But the long awaited coffee meeting finally happened and it was certainly worth the wait.

A few weeks back, Dave and I headed out on our lunch break to vote at the grocery store. That sentence makes me giggle.  But it’s true, and boy oh boy, I’m now 100% in love with early voting! Grab some broccoli and toilet paper, and pop in the voting booth. Nice! {Gotta love a tangent.}  Anywho, we were chatting about the coffees and the blog and I suggested to him that I may take my project in a more specific direction. I threw out the idea that I’d love to focus on people who’d given up on the rat race/traditional 9-5/workin’ for the man, whatever you want to call it and traded up for a life of living their passion. We discussed it a bit and then it was time to vote. I got distracted by choosing the best “I Voted” sticker and I haven’t thought much about it since.

Until today. Kim Schlinke was not chosen because she fits into that category, but as it turns out, she totally does. More on that in just a bit.  But first, who is this groovy chick and what’s her story?

If I had to sum Kim up in one word, I would not be able to do so.  She is creative, talented, witty, smart, shy, humble, beautiful, kind, warm and did I already say talented?  I knew immediately why April chose Kim as the person for me to meet.  There is nothing about the gal that isn’t to like.

Kim dabbles in many creative forms including creating faux gems out of polymer clay and even co-authoring a book (to be released in Sept, 2013). But her work is primarily at a sewing machine. She is a sample maker. Know what that is? If so, you are ahead of me. I had to ask. Turns out she works with fashion designers to transform their ideas into reality. I’m not sure how I thought this process worked exactly, but I guess I assumed Donna Karan was sitting at her machine going to town. Certainly not cranking out each piece by hand, but I figured she at least made the first one. In actuality, probably not. Kim is given the pattern and the direction from the designer and then meticulously works to turn that idea into a fashionista’s dream come true.

Kim tells me that she has been sewing since she was a little girl. She shares a memory she has of sitting at her mother’s feet as her mom worked on sewing projects.  Her mom would hand her scraps of material, a needle and thread and she’d sit and work as the hum of her mother’s machine filled the room like music. It’s a passion and talent her mom passed on to her and it’s been with her ever since.

Something else her mother (and father) passed on to her was a strong Midwestern work ethic and a desire for perfection. Kim recites the edict she vividly recalls from her parents, “A job worth doing is a job worth doing well.”  She follows that by saying, “I’ve always admired my parents for their high standards.” I mentioned that Kim is humble right? She shares with me that she doesn’t feel she has any particular special talent in the way of sewing, she’s just “tidy and determined to make things as perfect as possible.” I imagine that while her designers appreciate her tidiness and attention to detail, they would tell a different story on the talent topic.

Kim has never advertised her services. She gets all of her business by word of mouth.  She works with a designer for a time (a few years, usually) and then they take a break or move to NYC or whatever, and as Kim tells me, “then the Universe just sends me another one.” She is never short on work and when I asked her if money were the national currency, what she’d make her living doing her answer to me is “I’m doing it!” So, Kim is living the life she designed? Not exactly.

Kim wanted to be a paralegal.  She’d done a lot of administrative work and was always very successful when she worked for temp agencies. Her attention to detail and desire for perfection made her a huge hit with executives, not surprisingly. In an attempt to turn those skills into a more lucrative endeavor, she decided to enroll in paralegal school. She did this on Sept. 1, 2001, of course like all of us never knowing what was 10 days away and how life as we’d known it would be forever different.

To pay the bills while she was in school she began sewing for designers. She loved the work. But she carried on with getting her paralegal training and after completing the program two years later, proceeded to apply to every law firm in town. What she learned was that in addition to companies cutting back on staff after 9/11,  The University of Texas was graduating 200 paralegals every year and law firms had their pick of talent. What she lacked was experience and the only thing standing in the way of getting that experience, was her lack of experience.

When I asked Kim what event in her life shaped her most as a person, she considers it for a bit but eventually tells me it was 9/11.  She simply could not find work, not even at the temp agencies that loved her so much just a few years back. No one was hiring. Everyone was scared, uncertain and frozen. So Kim kept on sewing and as she says, “The sewing was just temporary and 12 years later I’m still at it.” And she says, “no doubt a whole lot happier than I would have been.”

Living the life of her dreams, doing work she loves and never having to worry where the next job is going to come from. That’s the kind of security all of us desire. But many people still think that kind of security only comes from working for someone else. More and more I am seeing evidence all around me that this just isn’t true anymore as Kim has amply proven.

Beyond sewing for designers, Kim also sews her own projects – specifically she creates “upcycled fashion garments”. Want more detail on that? You got it. Kim heads out to thrift stores as well as spots she describes as a sort of last resort Goodwill where things aren’t sold by the piece, but by the pound. She explains that before she walks in she has to get Zen.  “Everything is just piled up on long tables and I have to resist the urge to start folding it all.” Are we surprised by this? Nope. She tells me she can pick out a cashmere sweater by seeing a 1/4″ of it poking out from under heaps of polyester and cotton. Her treasures often have holes and stains. No matter. Kim has no interest in the item’s original cut and style. She is going to wash it and then with her magic hands and brilliant ideas, she is going to take odds and ends and turn them into something fit for the runway. And I am being literal here.

The most significant thing that’s happened for Kim in the last 3o days is that a photographer has selected her upcycled garments for his upcoming spread in Runway magazine coming out in December.  Everybody yell, “Yay Kim!”

God I love it when good things happen to great people! And so does Kim. She shares with me that she gets a kick out of the duality that exists in her life. She finds herself in the fashion world and is often surrounded by people with status and more money than they can count. But Kim says she’s really not at all impressed by this sort of wealth. “What impresses me is kindness.  I’ll take kindness and interesting people over rich people any day.”

Kim’s Golden Rule?  Be nice. Be responsible. And mind your own business.  When we got on the subject of our fast-paced world and the division that exists in our country, she shared with me a line that I just love.  “I think we could do with a lot less yelling and a lot more whispering.”

If there is anything I’ve learned from this experience, it is to expect nothing, to be open and to listen. Kim is a reminder that sometimes the most powerful lessons come from the least expected places and if you aren’t still and quiet you may not hear the whisper.

To learn more about Kim and her amazing fashions, check her out on Facebook.