Mind Vacation № 29: Checking In

Hi Friends,

Happy Fall! It felt like a good time to say hi and check in. How was everyone’s summer?

I like to ask my kids what their rose and thorn of the day was. My teenager is not particularly interested in this question, but my 9-year-old still plays along.

So, my summer roses: Calistoga with friends over Father’s Day weekend. We ended up at a local bar doing karaoke and then walked home with all of our families in the dark under the stars. It was very fun. Disneyland was a rose. New York solo for Shoppe Object was a rose.

OH YEH, I also had a solo painting show .

Really, making the work for that show was one of the biggest roses. I was so happy with where the paintings landed. It felt like a very real “I have arrived” moment, not like I arrived at some final destination, but like I arrived in a new, fertile place in my painting. There is so much there I want to keep exploring.

My thorns: the weather. We didn’t go away enough. We didn’t see the sun enough. I did not go to the beach ONCE. Money was hard this summer. Business was slow.

But here is what I learned.

As we move into fall, I feel like I’ve arrived in a new place in myself and in my business. I’m trying very hard to stay in the nowness of it instead of immediately trying to figure out what it all means or where it is going. Because being here right now actually feels pretty good.

One thing I know: leaning further into wholesale feels like a really fertile place for Jenny Pennywood. Going to Shoppe Object in New York confirmed that for me. And I am having SO MUCH FUN designing some of the new things we are making overseas.

I know there can be stigma around making things overseas, but guys, small business + local production is fucking hard right now. We are still doing it. Our home goods and wearables are still made here in California. But it is increasingly difficult and increasingly expensive. Small batch and conscious production are still incredibly important to me. But I’m also trying to let what feels good be part of how I make decisions.

Shape Shapes bag charms? YES PLEASE. Pure joy to design and bring into the world.

Foldie Totes? I resisted making these for reasons I don't even need to get into, but my team kept telling me they thought it was a good move. So I sampled them and fell in love. Also, we call them “Foldies” in the studio, and now that is their name.

What has surprised me is how much these new categories have opened something up creatively. I can approach color and pattern from a completely different perspective. I’m pulling out old drawings, revisiting things, changing scale, changing color, and finding freshness in work I thought I already knew.

And wine totes! Who would have thought they would be such a wholesale winner? Actually, me. I thought that one was going to work.

And then there is HOME. What is next for Jenny Pennywood Home Goods?

Petite and Medium Totes. Tea towels. Napkins. Work/Play Jackets. All the things made from the textured linen/cotton fabric we call Summit that has been part of Jenny Pennywood for so long.

Friends, I don't totally know.

Last year we paused a lot of Home because the costs had gone up so much that I needed to stop for a second and figure out what we were doing. Then we figured some of it out and decided to keep going with tea towels.

And NOW you all want Home again. Especially wholesale.

So we are trying to figure out what the future of it looks like.

The bigger conversation is securing our signature fabric for future seasons. It takes months to make our custom fabric and the minimums are HUGE, and as you can probably imagine, the cost has gone up and up and… up.

So this has become a very big conversation in our studio:

What is Jenny Pennywood without Home?

Does that fabric matter to you? Do the things we have made from it over all these years feel like an essential part of Jenny Pennywood?

I actually want to know. So, I think I’m going to devote a whole Mind Vacation to this because there is a lot to talk about, and I have some ideas about how we might bring Home back in a way that involves all of you.