Fashioning a future

Words by Joanne Cronrath Bamberger

Reality TV villain Wendy Pepper plans to spice up women’s wardrobes— and her own bottom line.

Reality television has changed Wendy Pepper’s life and her business forever—not because she watches it, but because she’s been on it. Her name doesn’t ring a bell? She’s hoping that if you’re looking for a new take on your wardrobe, it soon will.

Until last year, few outside the Washington, DC area knew that 41-year-old Pepper is a custom fashion designer. Today, she is a minor celebrity in the fashion world thanks to her unexpected success on Bravo’s “Project Runway.” It’s like a “Survivor” for New York City’s Garment District, in which contestants are given a fashion design challenge each week.

Now, she’s focusing on how best to use her talent, the hard lessons she learned about Fashion with a capital “F,” and a moment of fame to boost the profile and profits of her small business.

Pepper was alternately dubbed the “den mother,” the “long shot” and the “villain” on Bravo’s reality show. In last season’s contest, Pepper became the woman others loved to hate. Fellow contestants concluded that the fashion-designing mom from rural Virginia was more worried about reality show survival than haute couture. So they rooted for Pepper to get the boot. But week after week, despite the animosity other contestants and viewers felt toward her perceived tactics, she persevered.

Ultimately, Pepper learned more than just reality show survival from her experience. Despite the barrage of attacks on her fashion sensibilities and on her personally, Pepper came away with lessons she believes boosted her confidence. She analyzed the criticism aimed at her designs and turned it to her business advantage. Once she transformed the personal slights into professional critique—for example, some fellow contestants th ought her age made her irrelevant in the world of fashion—her business goal came into focus. She sensed that today’s societal demographics could be the key to her success.

“the population is aging and overweight. there are sociological factors at work that I th ink are out of sync with the fashion industry. So I used my hugely difficult experience as market research,” she says.

Pepper started her own custom design business in her tiny studio in Middleburg, Virginia, in 1990, catering to women in the nation’s capital and its affluent suburbs. Her designs cost from $1,500 for a cocktail dress to more than $4,000 for a wedding dress. Pepper has had a steady local clientele over the years but she admits that she didn’t th ink much about a business plan. But now she th inks she has found a fashion vacuum for busy middle-aged women like her.

“[the 'Project Runway’ experience] said to me, ‘you could be a player in this field.’”

In the basement workroom of her bungalow in Middleburg, Pepper doesn’t look the part of a rising fashion maven. Wearing non-designer mommy clothes—her nod to fashion a pair of red patent leather Dansko clogs—she’s whipping up a wedding dress pattern with her daughter’s orange Crayola marker for a customer who’s making a 160-mile trek for a fitting. Clutter must feed Pepper’s creative spirit, because on a table big enough to seat a dozen for dinner she has only enough space to sketch out the bodice, pushing back folds of cloth as they encroach on her few inches of workspace.

She talks, wandering amid the multi-colored yards of fabric hanging from the water pipes of her workroom. Pepper acknowledges that even a small amount of national notoriety is a once-in-a-lifetime chance most small business owners can only dream about, and she doesn’t want to squander it. Pepper knows she’s got to finish developing her business strategy and do it soon before her notoriety fades, even as she adjusts to the shock of her newfound success. But she can’t do it alone, especially since she is recently separated from her husband and has full-time responsibility for raising her six-year-old daughter. So the way she approaches time management has changed significantly. Her working hours are now limited to kindergarten school hours, and she has to be more willing to delegate the details. As a result, she has started hiring help to do some of the actual sewing on works in progress and also has hired a consultant to write her business plan so she can be more focused on raising the capital she needs to market her designs nationally, someth ing she never th ought would be her reality.

“[Being on 'Project Runway’] was like taking the elevator to the top, and I don’t know that I was really ready,” says Pepper.

Her small share of fame has already changed her business. In the last year Pepper’s client list has doubled. So she has changed her pricing schedule. Instead of charging just for the cloth ing she creates, she also charges by the hour for her time. this helps keep her client list to a manageable level. And while her client base was mostly local just a year ago, now women from all over the country want Wendy Pepper designs, including celebrities like former supermodel Carol Alt.

“Wendy has someth ing she feels about fashion that others see and connect to,” says Alt. “Wendy is a person with confidence, enth usiasm and a great passion—a real triple play. If a business person has one or two, but not all th ree, they may not make it.”

Designing for celebrities is not where Pepper sees her future th ough. It’s designing for women of her generation.

“I realized,” says Pepper, “in a creative field somebody with a mission is much better off and has a lot more power [than a person with out a mission].”

Pepper believes her biggest lesson learned is one that all small businesses owners need to focus on for success— learning to be oneself and not caving in to industry driven pressure. With that insight, Pepper is confident she can overcome the slights suffered at the hands of more experienced fashionistas and make her mark on the world of design—while maintaining her small business and customer-focused sensibilities.

5 Tips from Wendy

• Get creative as demands on your time increase. Build a great team around you that can help as your business evolves.
• Stay grounded if “overnight” success comes your way. Remember what got you where you are and realize you may have to work even harder than before to keep the ball rolling.
• Pursue your goals with fearless conviction.
• Analyze what is lacking in your field and provide it to your clients.
• Use negative feedback as a positive. Use it to refocus and define your business mission.