فصل 07

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I Am the Antifashion

Why fit in when you were born to stand out?

—Dr. Seuss As the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre so poignantly put it, “Hell is other people.” While I no longer agree with this sentiment, I can empathize with the guy. When I was about four or five, my parents threw me a birthday party. There was cake, presents, and a pi?ata. When the time came, I lined up, got blindfolded, spun around in circles, and whacked the poor papier-mâché donkey with a broomstick, just like all the other kids. Hitting something with a stick was very gratifying, but I had never seen a pi?ata before, and had no idea that there was any sort of end goal. Therefore, it came as a complete shock to me when another child’s final whack knocked the donkey’s head off; it split open, spilling its candy guts onto the ground. The sight of Tootsie Rolls and Starbursts turned the other kids into screaming primates and as they immediately dove for the candy, I stood frozen. I was completely unaware that such a treasure trove even existed inside that pi?ata, so instead of jumping into the melee to fight for my rights, I turned, ran straight to the nearest table, and promptly crawled under it. And there I stayed until the last sugar-sodden five-year-old party guest had left and I felt it was safe to emerge from my cave.

Twenty-five years later, I’m still not a huge fan of surprises.

This is your brain on introversion.

Though it might not seem like it from the outside, I’m actually an introvert. Common knowledge used to dictate that extroverts were outgoing and introverts were shy, and this certainly never applied to me. I’m about as far away as you can get from a shrinking violet. However, research over the last few years has been focused on how the two personality types are actually more defined by what energizes them. Extroverts get their energy from being around a lot of people, but introverts find large groups draining and require time alone to recharge.

Introverts and extroverts also process external stimuli via different pathways in the brain, which means that something an extrovert would find completely fun and novel—such as a bunch of kindergarteners rioting for candy—would be totally overwhelming to an introvert like me.

However, as a kid you’re not self-aware enough to understand why you’re different; you just know that you are. Being an only child meant that I naturally spent a ton of time alone. I preferred it this way and was never lonely. Yet at school this tendency to be alone made me feel weird. It was considered strange to want to be alone on the swings while everyone else was on the jungle gym, even if alone on the swings was where I was happiest. As a result I spent way too much time thinking about what other people thought about me, and what I could possibly do to make them like me more. Did they think my family’s house was big enough? Did they think I was pretty? Did they like my backpack? I think it’s cool, but what if this backpack makes me look like I’m in sixth grade when really I’m in seventh? Just typing that paragraph makes me exhausted, so I think it was no wonder that by the time I was a teenager, I ended up preferring to make tuna sandwiches at Subway, where at least I could be alone in my head, rather than subjecting myself to the nonstop emotional roller coaster they call adolescence.

Introverts are naturally more sensitive because they don’t need a ton of dopamine, the “feel-good” neurotransmitter that your brain produces in response to positive stimuli. Conversely, extroverts can’t get enough. They even love adrenaline, the chemical that your brain produces in the face of fear, so they need bigger and riskier situations to produce the same natural high that an introvert gets from just having a conversation with a close friend. Introverts are also more apt to pay attention to the small details (and an eBay store is a treasure trove of small details).

Much of the world, from school to the workplace, is set up to reward extroverts, and therefore it can be easier for introverts to feel overlooked or as if they don’t measure up. For instance, even if you know all the answers but don’t want to call attention to yourself by raising your hand, you might end up feeling, or being perceived as, less smart than the kids flailing their arms to get the teacher’s attention. Same goes for work. Just remember, as Susan Cain writes in Quiet, “There’s zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas.”

In business, a disproportionate amount of importance is placed on the ability to network. If you don’t thrive on going out and meeting a million people, you might end up feeling that you have less of a chance of getting ahead in your career. Also, introverts might hang back in meetings and thus not be perceived as “leadership material,” even though introverted people frequently make more empathetic managers. As I’ve said before, part of the reason that I started Nasty Gal was that I wanted a job where I could be by myself and not have to deal with people. I wasn’t great at in-person customer service, because I can’t fake a smile to save my life, but it turned out that I was really good at it electronically. Over e-mail, eBay, and MySpace, I was a customer service queen—able to respond to people politely and genuinely, infusing everything with a digital smile. Psychologists now believe that social media is a really valuable tool for introverts, because it allows them to communicate and even network on their own terms.

Even though introverts might keep quiet during meetings, they have several tendencies that actually come in handy in the world of business: They make fewer risky financial decisions (hello, $1 million in the bank at Nasty Gal!), are more persistent when faced with a problem that isn’t easily solvable, and can also be very creative. A lot of the world’s great artists, thinkers, and even businesspeople are and were introverts (Albert Einstein, Bill Gates, and J. K. Rowling, to name a few), so in no way does being an introvert doom you into a life in the shadows.

Getting Off at the Wrong Stop

I think I got off on the wrong planet. Beam me up, Scotty, there’s no rational life here.

—Robert Anton Wilson

I was once (and still am) a not-so-secret metalhead. I’ll admit that sometimes feeling bad feels good. A lot of people poo-poo downer music, but they must just be really well adjusted. Nothing, for me, feels more comforting than the sound of an angry, misunderstood man.

There is a great song, “Born Too Late,” by a band called Saint Vitus that I have always loved. I can still recite some of the lyrics by heart, because they’re just too good. And by good, naturally, I mean bad.

Every time I’m on the street

People laugh and point at me

They laugh about my length of hair

And the out-of-date clothes I wear

They say my songs are much too slow

But they don’t know the things I know.

I have a friend who told me something recently that really resonated. He said that he felt like he’d “gotten off at the wrong stop,” as if there’s a bus traveling through space and time that randomly opens its doors and drops souls off to live through whatever time they’re assigned. I don’t believe we’re all fit for the time we’re assigned. It’s a weird world we live in, and until time travel exists we’ve all got to make the most of where we land.

Failure Is Your Invention

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

—George Bernard Shaw

I gave up a long time ago on finding anything that was 100 percent, totally “me.” I was not only open to trying on different lifestyles, I forced such experimentation upon myself—always knowing that I’d evolve past it, rarely surprised when I was ready to move on and never so attached that it hindered my growth.

Strangely, I think this attitude paid off when I started the business. From Nasty Gal’s inception, I have always viewed the business as a work in progress. I constantly tweak and move on, peeling back layers of the onion as new ones arrive. If something didn’t work—like if I put a dress up for auction and no one was bidding on it—I didn’t just assume that no one wanted it. I just tried something else. I rewrote the product description, or swapped out the thumbnail because I thought that maybe people couldn’t judge the silhouette correctly from the original picture I’d posted. I never assumed that I’d just done my best job the first time around.

Your challenge as a #GIRLBOSS is to dive headfirst into things without being too attached to the results. When your goal is to gain experience, perspective, and knowledge, failure is no longer a possibility. Failure is your invention. I believe that there is a silver lining in everything, and once you begin to see it, you’ll need sunglasses to combat the glare. It is she who listens to the rest of the world who fails, and it is she who has enough confidence to define success and failure for herself who succeeds. These words were not invented for an incremental life. “Success” and “failure” serve a world that is black-and-white. And as I said before, it’s all just kinda gray. This may sound sad, or boring, but it’s actually quite empowering. It’s not the prescription that many books may suggest exists, but it allows you to self-prescribe. And to self-subscribe.

You Belong Wherever You Want to Belong

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.

—Oscar Wilde

There’s a certain freedom to being an outsider. You do what you want, say what you want, and move on when you’ve worn out your welcome. In the past seven years, I’ve gone from being a nobody with no job and no insurance to someone who is seen as a leader and a role model. I was once told by a big-shot CEO that if I’m in an elevator with employees and chat with one but not the others, it signifies to everyone that the person I spoke to is more important than the others. To put it plainly, I exist under a microscope.

It’s been rough getting used to the fact that what I say matters, whether it is good or bad, and holy shit, people actually want to talk to me. When we have our all-hands meetings, I am required to stand in front of two hundred people and talk about everything that’s happening within the business while simultaneously seeming like I didn’t have a bad morning and also possess every answer to the company’s problems. I’ve asked myself, Who am I to hold all of these other people captive while I blather and make bad jokes? Oh shit, I’m the boss, that’s who. Some people become CEOs for this exact reason—because they like to be in the spotlight—but it doesn’t come naturally to me, and I don’t know that it ever will. I no longer expect anyone to throw a rotten tomato at me and yell, “Off the stage, freak!” but the whole thing is still pretty surreal.

I’ve played with a lot of different lifestyles and identities. When I was living in Olympia, I snuck into a high school prom and danced with the cutest underclassmen I could find. I dressed up like a soccer mom to steal a loaf of bread. Never in my life, though, did I ever imagine that the role that I would actually end up inhabiting was that of a CEO. I felt like a fraud for a long time, as if there were no way in hell I was qualified. Who gave this freak the keys? I thought to myself, wondering if, and when, I’d ever be found out. I refused to think of people I met through business as friends. My real friends were weirdos from San Francisco who were broke, loved obscure elf metal, and celebrated 6/6/06 with me like it was Christmas. I kept telling myself that Danny, my investor, wasn’t my friend, even though we had great conversations over dinner and I loved his wife. I thought that people like Danny couldn’t be my real friends, because they were from this pedigreed world of MBAs and real careers, whereas I was just an interloper in a Black Sabbath T-shirt.

Finally, though, I arrived at a point where I decided this was bullshit. I stopped feeling as if I didn’t belong anywhere, and realized that I belonged anywhere I wanted to be—whether that was a boardroom, business class, or on stage at a Women’s Wear Daily CEO Summit. Today, I consider Danny my peer. Sometimes I can even get him to laugh at a fart joke.

Nasty Gal has been my MBA. I’ve learned to not be shy about stopping someone in the middle of a presentation to ask him to please clarify something because I don’t know what he’s talking about. If I still don’t get it, I’ll tell him so and ask him to explain it again. Sometimes I can practically hear the eyes rolling around the room—but given that I’m making decisions that involve so much money and so many people, I can’t afford to pretend to know what’s up. When you run a company the size of mine, you’re not the only one who ends up paying for your mistakes. I could act like a CEO or I could really be a CEO, which means doing whatever I need to do (including asking obvious questions) to make the best decision for my company. No matter where you are in life, you’ll save a lot of time by not worrying too much about what other people think about you. The earlier in your life that you can learn that, the easier the rest of it will be. You is who you is, so get used to it.

On Being a Freak

I like being myself. Myself and nasty.

—Aldous Huxley

When you accept yourself, it’s surprising how much other people will accept you, too. As a company, Nasty Gal sits half in the fashion world and half in its own galaxy. I’ve never felt that more acutely than when I go to New York Fashion Week. I absolutely hate Fashion Week. It hurts me from the inside out. Let me break down Fashion Week for you, and I apologize if I am shattering your dreams of glamour and sophistication.

You are assigned a piece of bench in a too-hot or too-cold warehouse that is hard to get to because all the cabs are taken and the subway is not a choice due to your absurd-ass shoes. The piece of bench assigned to you is not even as wide as your butt, and someone is probably sitting on it. You are forced to either act like an asshole and confront that someone and tell him or her to move, or you go and put your butt down in someone else’s assigned piece of bench, at which point that person will be forced to act like an asshole and come along and tell you to move. At this point, you couldn’t care less about the clothes that you’re about to see; you wish you were back in your hotel room eating glutinous pancakes and wearing sweats.

I’m not a blogger, I’m not an editor, and my company doesn’t buy luxury brands, so even though I’ve been written about on Style.com and in such magazines as Elle, whenever I go to a fashion party I feel like Lindsay Lohan in Mean Girls, when she shows up to the Halloween party in a nightgown and buck teeth while everyone else is wearing lingerie and bunny ears. All of a sudden I revert to being an insecure thirteen-year-old, wondering if I’m wearing the right brand of shoes, and are they the right season? If so, are they the right color? Barf. It’s a high school outfit contest, and I’d rather be working.

Nasty Gal is antifashion in that we encourage girls to choose what fashion means to them. We aren’t just following, and neither are our customers. I’m getting more and more comfortable with one foot in the fashion world and one foot out. As I’ve gotten to know more people in the fashion industry, it’s been refreshing to realize that a lot of them respect me because, as an outsider, I have a unique point of view.

Had I tried to fit in, Nasty Gal would have crashed and burned a long time ago. The last thing the world needs is another boring person or another boring brand, so embrace all the things that make you different. Alter your clothes all you want, but don’t you dare alter your inner freak—she’s got your back as much as I do.

Getting What You Want Even When You No Longer Want It

Far and away, the hardest thing for me to get used to about Nasty Gal’s meteoric rise is that my own profile has risen with it. For years I prided myself on being anonymous, an expert at the art of avoiding human interaction. But today I could be walking along picking my nose, grabbing my boyfriend’s butt, or trying on lip gloss in Sephora when suddenly someone sidles up to me and says, “You know, I really love Nasty Gal.”

There’s no way around it: The success of Nasty Gal means that my life has permanently changed. I’ve been tagged on Twitter by people who saw me going through airport security, running down a mountain in Big Sur, and sitting in the driveway of my own house. I’ve had people I don’t know come up to me at parties and introduce themselves by saying, “Hey, I heard we’re neighbors!” They’re thrilled, but I’m thinking, Who are you and how do you know where I live?

I once Instagrammed a picture of my poodle, Donna, without realizing that my phone number was visible on her tag. When I started to get calls and texts from strangers, I was forced into changing the number that I’d had for years.

Once, at a meeting with my bank, they gave me a gift. It was a book called Silent Safety: Best Practices for Protecting the Affluent. The book had chapters with titles such as “Yacht Security” and “Surviving a Hostage Situation.” I thought it was absurd, until it began to terrify me. Holy shit, is this the way I’m supposed to live my life now?

I’m not complaining—this is all just stuff that I’m still getting used to. For example, it’s weird to go through life being congratulated on a daily basis. In a single year, I had a profile in Forbes, was on the cover of Entrepreneur, listed on CNNMoney’s 40 Under 40, Inc.com’s 30 Under 30, and named by Inc. magazine as the fastest-growing retailer in the country. Our office has consumed a whole hell of a lot of champagne, but how many bottles can you pop? Remember, #GIRLBOSS: It’s not cool to get drunk on your own success. PORTRAIT OF A #GIRLBOSS:

Norma Kamali, Fashion Designer and Entrepreneur

When I was young, I was so smart and was sure I could do anything. I was convinced I could be a painter and did everything from intensive life drawing while worshipping Michelangelo to studying art history and painting with a passion. My mother convinced me that painting may not be the best way to earn a living and pay rent.

I was very lucky to receive scholarships and grants for my paintings, but also a scholarship to FIT. There I studied fashion illustration and found my way into design after traveling to London in the 1960s. I opened a store in 1967 and have been in business ever since.

I learned early on the motto “Know thyself.” I think if you have a unique point of view and stay relevant and authentic, you will make an impression. You have to be excited and passionate about your ideas to make them work. Chances are it will take twenty of those good ideas before one sticks and has a chance to become real, but a good idea is only good if there is a well-thought-out plan to make it a reality.

The most important thing to do is to take risks. The risks are where breakthroughs happen, and big shifts take you to new places and create opportunities. They can be really scary and intimidating, but that means it is taking you out of your comfort zone.

All designers look at life through a creative lens and are inclined to create their brand of beauty in their everyday lives. I am happy to say it brings me joy and I love doing it for others as well. I prefer to be creative first and famous last.

My mother told me when I was eleven years old, “Learn how to take care of yourself so that the man you marry is the man you choose to be with and not just the man who will take care of you.” Women have an opportunity now to change the world. We are all aware of the movement toward women becoming a significant force in the chance for real dynamic change. When things aren’t working so well, like now, it becomes a disruptive time.

My advice would be to dream and never stop dreaming. Making my dreams come true has always inspired me to work hard. One dream is never enough, and your dream can be molded and finessed along the way to become relevant and successful.