 Anybody
who’s tried to crawl around after children in blue jeans
knows the favorite pair of Sevens sheds its comfy status the
first time you squat down to meet a toddler face to face. “I
used to wear them all the time,” Annela Ahmedani says.
Then she had her first child, Anabella, and discovered that
sitting on the ground in jeans was incredibly uncomfortable.
So instead, she wore gym clothes as she adjusted to her new life
as a mom—at best, it was active pants and a nice sweater.
A Fashion Institute of Technology graduate who spent ten years
in the fashion industry, Ahmedani, 33, looked in the mirror and
was not impressed. “I thought, This is horrible,” she
says. “There has to be a way to feel as good as I do in
a track suit without looking so sloppy.”
The idea of launching her own clothing line had been brewing
in Ahmedani’s mind since college. When she returned to
work in New York City after three months of maternity leave,
the possibility of working from home in Maplewood was even more
compelling—especially in the context of the fashion industry,
where she says people were particularly unsympathetic to how
much she missed her daughter. “I was crying all day,” she
says. “I couldn’t even put pictures up of my baby
because I missed her so much.”
She started putting her feelers out, and left her full-time career
to pursue consulting and freelance positions. While freelancing
for a small company, she met a women two years younger who started
her own line of clothing. “She just decided to do it,” Ahmedani
says. “I thought, Why can’t I?”
LABOR OF LOVE: Ahmedani at
home with her daughter, Anabella,
and son, Luka. |
Always knowing she’d want to start a business someday,
Ahmedani studied both fashion design and international trade
and marketing while at FIT. Two months after she decided to move
forward with the Anabella Skye fashion line—named after
her daughter, who’s now four years old—Ahmedani found
out she was pregnant with her second child. (Luka turned one
in November.) So she moved along with research and development
for a line of functional and stylish clothes. “It just
sort of all came together,” she says. She aimed to use
comfortable fabrics that feel luxurious, but are easy to care
for, and focused on styles that are figure-flattering.
For a woman from Long Island who had always worn the trendiest
clothes, latest accessories, and high heels, it was a change
in personal style. “When you have children, it changes
everything about your identity,” Ahmedani says. “You
have to redefine who you are.”
These days, she’s a stay-at-home mom and an entrepreneur
at once. Several boutiques around the country have picked up
Anabella Skye, and Ahmedani visits trade shows to display her
product. A new business in Maplewood, No. 165, just picked up
her line. “It’s a matter of finding stores that understand
this customer base,” she says. She also launched anabellaskye.com,
and customers can e-mail special requests through the website,
which she’ll try to accommodate.
Her efforts haven’t been solo—in fact, two fellow
stay-at-home moms have joined her. Maplewood residents Elizabeth
Aaron and Jen Latimer have worked as her publicity team, putting
together press packets at Ahmedani’s dining room table.
Latimer even serves as the fit model for the designs. ”After
our day job is asleep, we get to work on Anabella Skye,” says
Latimer, who has a four-year-old son. ”It’s all been
a lot of fun and very convenient.”
Aaron, who has a four-year-old and a one-year old, says she heard
Ahmedani and Latimer talking about the clothing line and really
wanted to be a part of the endeavor. She’s been using her
marketing skills to get the word out. ”I don’t have
fit model dimensions, but I can seal envelopes,” she says.
SEAMLESS TRANSITION:
Latimer, Ahmedani, and Aaron plan
their spring collection. |
Ahmedani also gets help from the apparel’s four-year-old
namesake. “Anabella tells me which samples are her favorites,” she
says. “She actually has a good eye for that stuff.” And
her tagging along leads to even more mom-and-daughter time.
Ahmedani’s hours vary week by week. She hires a babysitter
two mornings a week, and otherwise does most of her work after
the kids go to bed. If Luka cooperates by taking a nap while
Anabella is at school for half the day, she gets some productivity
in then, too.
She plans to design about fifteen to twenty styles each season,
creating jackets, tops, pants, shorts, and dresses that comfortably
fit active moms as well as women who are in their early stages
of pregnancy or who just gave birth. “I try to keep a real
woman’s figure in mind and accommodate changes,” she
says. “These clothes move up and down with you.”
Launching the line hasn’t been without stress. Ahmedani
and her husband, Carlos, who works at Tommy Hilfiger in New York
City, have struggled to try to get Anabella Skye off the ground. “We’re
working hard,” she says. “We’re trying to get
the business going, and then we can breathe.”
Much as she loves her children, balancing two careers—mom
and fashion designer—within the confines of one house can
be stressful. “Some days I want to scream,” she says, “but
it all works out somehow.”
If the business takes off, Ahmedani hopes to have an office completely
staffed by mothers with young children, and she says she’d
keep the hours flexible. “Moms may not have normal business
hours, but they know how to get things done, and they’re
the most organized people in the world,” she says.
As a young mom herself, she also knows how much happier she is
now that she can spend so much quality time with her children. “I
keep thinking, if I wasn’t here, who would be doing this?
All of the hugs, all of the time we spend together—it’s
so nice to be present for everything.”Did you know that New Jersey is home to more than 75 threatened and endangered species? Susan Kraham will make sure you do if you’ve created an impediment to their repopulating.
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