Being a small business owner has always been a dream of mine. Creating and producing my very own apparel line often felt like a far-off dream when I was building out my career as a Technical Designer within other companies, but it always felt like a shiny North Star toward which to reach. Something about being the primary decision maker and bringing a vision of mine to life was also a huge draw for me. So last year, when I left corporate apparel life, I set up my home office with all the intentions of making my business work no matter what! And while I had a little traction in the first couple of months, it was nowhere near the monthly revenue that I’d been really hoping to achieve. It was only about 30% of what I’d estimated for my first year’s goals and I suddenly realized that I was going to need some help. When you work for yourself, the freedom you can create is balanced by a serious lack of accountability. I could spend an entire day working on a puzzle, which might have been relaxing and rejuvenating, but I made absolutely no money by making that choice. (I did this quite often in my first month as a very purposeful 30 days of not working, but it soon became apparent that I would need to adjust). I was already reaching out to all of my industry connections and was starting up my social media channels, but it was clearly going to take time to organically grow to the numbers I wanted to see. I was only three months into being a new entrepreneur when I started to panic. How was I ever going to figure out how to make this work, let alone grow? How was I going to push myself out of my own comfort zone to make sales, be visible and learn all about marketing when I had no idea where to start? Had I just made the worst decision of my life?! Was the world going to implode on me??  Ok, I didn’t go that far. But I was experiencing a lot of stress and anxiety because I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I knew I needed a teacher or a mentor to guide me through this new endeavor, and the first place I searched was for free content on the internet. I watched so many free videos and tutorials, but so many of those options only scratched the surface of what I was needing. That was when I decided to search for a career coach. I’d done some group coaching work with a wonderful group of female entrepreneurs as I was trying to set up my company, and I’d been given the opportunity to work with a 1:1 career coach at my last full-time job. So I knew that they were out there, and I knew how incredibly valuable they were! But I was pinching pennies and I feared that I was looking for something that didn’t exist. I am a highly ambitious person. When people hear about my true company ambitions for the next 10-15 years, they all look at me like I’m crazy. I’ve been told countless times that I’ll never reach the goals I’ve put in place, and that I need to think more realistically. I’ve been told that I’m trying to do too much, take on too many dreams at once, and I need to pull everything back. And while this advice is warranted to a certain extent, the people who really think I’m going to settle for anything less than extreme success don’t know me. I had to find a coaching company and a coach who understood that, and would help me reach those goals, not change them. And I’m so pleased to tell you that I did indeed find a coach, a company and a community that truly encourages me to set big goals and then teaches me how to go out and achieve them. Interested in knowing more about the company I work with for coaching and mentorship? It’s not for everyone! But if you’re ambitious like me, and you’re looking for accountability and guidance to reach the stars, I’d be happy to give you some information and details. Just send me a message and we can set up some time to talk!

Remember staring at the TV after school, yearning for escape and adventure? For me, that yearning was fueled by the Travel Channel in the early 2000s, particularly a show called "Great Hotels with Samantha Brown." Unlike the other programs filled with mostly male hosts, Samantha offered a refreshing perspective – a quirky, funny woman exploring the world with kindness and respect. Why Samantha Stood Out As a teenager figuring out who I was, seeing a woman confidently navigate new cultures and experiences was incredibly inspiring. Samantha wasn't just some celebrity chef telling you what to eat. She interacted with locals, showcased unique destinations, and did it all with a genuine enthusiasm that was contagious. More Than Just a Travel Show "Great Hotels" wasn't just a travelogue; it was a window into a world of possibilities. Suddenly, that trip to Europe you only dreamt about in magazines felt attainable. Samantha's down-to-earth personality made travel seem less intimidating and more like an exciting adventure waiting to happen. How I Attempted to Follow in Samantha's Footsteps As I started my own professional career several years later, I remembered watching Samantha as I started to have the opportunity to travel more and more for my job. The way that she taught me to be open to new ideas, understanding of new cultures and completely curious of what I could learn in a new place was so important for me. Maybe you, like me, crave new experiences and a break from the everyday. Maybe you're looking for inspiration to step outside your comfort zone. Samantha's story is proof that travel isn't just for the privileged few. With a little planning and a lot of curiosity, you too can explore the world and create your own unforgettable memories. Ready to Start Your Own Travel Journey? Samantha's legacy extends far beyond "Great Hotels."  She's an Emmy award-winning host with countless shows under her belt, showcasing destinations from bustling cities to hidden gems. You can follow her current show, "Samantha Brown's Places to Love" on PBS, or delve into her past adventures online. So, the next time you feel that wanderlust creeping in, remember Samantha Brown. Let her story be your inspiration to dust off your passport, book that plane ticket, and embark on your own adventure!

When I was a young apparel technical designer, my mode was constantly in high speed. Walk fast to each meeting, talk fast in each call, speed through the work and create proof that I could produce high volumes of results every single day. An old colleague of mine and I used to even race each other when digitizing our patterns into the computer at the end of every day! Whoever could get their pattern shapes clicked into the software the fastest won, and we honestly had so much fun doing that together. (Insert eye roll here). I took pride in my ability to produce mass amounts of work each week, and thought of myself as “ready for the next level” because of my speed and quantity of completed materials. But looking back on this time now, it wasn’t my speed that helped me move up the ranks as a young professional. It was my respect, my thirst for knowledge and my ability to humble myself by asking a ton of questions. I had an understanding that I had to prove myself worthy of those promotions. I just wasn’t so aware of what “worthy” meant. Here are the reasons I received my first promotion at my first professional job over 15 years ago: I knew that I didn’t know what I didn’t know: For the first full year of my career, I didn’t touch a garment in a fitting. I didn’t get to mark or cut up samples, pin up corrections or lead a meeting. I took notes. And then I took more notes. As an Assistant Technical Designer, it was my job to annotate everything that was happening in each fitting so that my manager could go back to her desk and use my notes to write up the official comments to the factory. It was also my job to update sketches in Adobe Illustrator to match the garment comments, update our PLM software information to match the comments, and observe techniques in updating the paper patterns to match the comments. I wanted so badly to learn how to run my own fittings, correct my own paper patterns and write my own comments! But I knew that I needed to learn how it was done before I could do it myself. That understanding alone, and the respect that I gave to my manager while she was teaching me and guiding me through all of these processes was a huge win for me. I knew how to (most of the time) shut my mouth: I have been known to be a hothead in certain situations, especially in the middle of my career when I was gaining a ton of experience but not leveling up (more on that here in a minute). But at this earliest stage of my professional life, I knew that my place was to learn and listen. I have a few instances burned into my brain where I spoke up in a meeting inappropriately, usually due to some frustration, and I was so lucky to have an amazing manager who always took the time to explain to me immediately afterward why that was the wrong move. She kept me in check, and I learned better etiquette because of that. I showed gratitude: I had always been the type of person to say please and thank you to anybody in my circle. And this practice went a long way with my team and my managers. I let them know all the time that I appreciated their leadership and expertise. I was polite, thoughtful and kind to people. I honestly didn’t think that I was smarter, better or more worthy of anything than them, and I let them know that I felt that way. Too often these days, we’re experiencing a phenomenon of young professionals truly believing that they know more than those of us who have been doing our jobs and building our careers for decades. It’s something that gets discussed at conferences, leadership tables and executive meetings. If this describes you, know that the leaders at your company know your name, but not for good reasons. Show humility, gratitude and kindness to those working to show you how you can move forward in your career. This propelled me forward more than anything. On the flip side of this coin, here are the reasons I didn’t get promoted in the middle years of my career, and may also be the reason you’re not getting promoted. These anecdotes are so embarrassing to tell. Looking back on these situations now, I just cringe. But I did learn from a lot of mistakes, of which I hope you’ll take a message or two from now. I thought I knew better than everyone else in the room: I will never forget the day I started at a new job and immediately started giving my opinion on how their process was wrong. Day one, I didn’t even know everybodys’ names yet, and I was “helping them” learn how to run a more efficient fitting. Oof. My brand new manager pulled me aside afterward and advised me to ease into my new role, and take some time to learn their processes fully before I started giving advice. My best advice in summary on this one is: If you’re brand new at a job, take the first three to six full months to learn, observe and create good relationships. Since this time, I’ve had the opportunity to observe some of the best leaders and managers in our industry do exactly this before they start implementing any change in their new role. I believed that faster was better: Just like I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I was crushing projects left and right, outperforming everyone else in quantity. I was not a candidate for promotion in this state. It wasn’t until I started to understand the concept of quality over quantity that my career started to move in an upward trajectory again. Those of us decades into our careers operate at a slower pace on purpose. Let me say that again: Those of us decades into our careers operate at a slower pace on purpose. We are not getting older and slower. We value the quality of the work that we do so much more than the quantity. We know that producing ten amazing results is actually and truly better than producing one hundred crappy results. Slow down to go fast. Take your time and do better work, not just more work. The improved quality of your work is what will get you promoted. Every. Single. Time. I lost sight of my manners: All that gratitude and kindness that I’d had at my first job that got me promoted had evolved into an air of arrogance. I didn’t show enough appreciation for anybody around me, and I was even told to my face once that I was tactless. Ouch. Kindness goes a long way in every aspect of life. Period.  I don’t feel that I need to say any more than that. I recently heard a story of a young woman looking to be promoted this year, and is trying to prove it. Her manager put her in charge of a small aspect of one of the team’s projects to give her the chance to see what it’s like in a leadership role. Not long after being given this opportunity, she decided to take the lead on all aspects of the project, not just her smaller part, and started taking meetings with the leadership team on her own to discuss the project’s details without her team members. When the team got wind of all the tasks she’d signed them up for without their input or advice, they were livid. Unfortunately, this situation is exactly why she won’t get promoted this year. She didn’t show any respect to her team members by including them in the conversation. She bit off more than she could chew by taking on more than she was given, and she thought she knew enough to be able to speak for everyone on the team. She agreed to too much, too fast and rubbed everyone the wrong way. Only when she learns to involve her team, respect their advice, and take her time to get all of the experts in the right room together will she actually be considered ready for the next level. In summary, getting promoted can be simple. Here it is: Be Kind - Be the type of person your team members like to work with. Be Humble - It’s ok that you don’t know everything, and it is better to ask questions and admit that. Be Polite - Say “Please” and “Thank You” out loud and often. SLOW DOWN - This is the biggest one. Slow down and produce better work, not more work. People always say that you need to be doing the work of someone at the level above you before you’ll even be considered for that promotion. Slowing down to create great results is genuinely the best way to do that.

I was listening to Conde Nast Traveler’s “Women's Who Travel" podcast the other day. I started having a bit of a fantasy thinking about the day when they invite me to come chat with them, and I started to think about how I define myself as a woman who travels. I am a woman who travels for business. I love to travel for pleasure, and my experience traveling for business has allowed me to find more rest and relaxation on true vacation trips than I ever did before. But traveling for business is a very different kind of travel and I wanted to acknowledge some of the major differences while honoring the amazing women who continue to professionally travel every year, quarter and month. Traveling for business is a non-stop whirlwind of constantly being on your game. Very few people jump on airplanes for their jobs without having an important meeting or an important task to go complete. As women, that usually means our wardrobe needs to be on point, our hair needs to be done, and our entire makeup kit needs to come with us. The ability to appear fresh and put together while battling jet lag, exhaustion, dry skin, thirst, hunger and sometimes even homesickness is a task in and of itself. When I pack for a business trip, my same methods of choosing one pair of pants for every two days, a shirt for everyday, dry toiletries and fitting everything into a carry-on still hold true. It is much more difficult to fit my professional trousers into that carry-on than it is to fit my vacation bathing suits, but I worked on getting it down to a science. It is not easy. There were years and years where I packed giant suitcases full of my best work clothes, and ran into several times where those bags were lost for the first few days of my trip. So not only did it make me feel more frazzled, I was also wearing whatever I could find from a local strip mall instead of looking my best. While nobody else in the room maybe cared about that, my own comfortability was jeopardized. There is a certain level of confidence I feel when I'm in an outfit that makes me look my best. That confidence is difficult to find when you're wearing men's jeans because they were the only thing that fit you when you went shopping in Vietnam. I've had so many people tell me how lucky I am for having the opportunity to travel for a company. And while it is absolutely true that I've had amazing adventures traveling the world on a work budget, the lifestyle is often anything but glamorous. The women who travel quarterly, monthly or sometimes even weekly are genuine superheroes. The toll that it takes on your body and your mind and emotions is difficult to describe to anybody who hasn't experienced it personally. I can tell you that in 2018, when I traveled 14 times that year, I had a quick stop at home for just a few days in the middle of July. My husband and I went to lunch and I just broke down in tears for no particular reason. I was exhausted. I missed my husband. I missed being able to have lunch wherever I wanted and eat whatever food I wanted. I was jet-lagged and my body was telling me I needed a break. If you know a woman who is rarely at home with her family, constantly jumping on planes to attend business meetings, make deals and represent her company, send her a little bit of love today. She may look strong, beautiful and glamorous to the outside world, but there's also a good chance that she's just looking forward to a lazy weekend at home with her family and misses them even when she is at home because she knows the next trip is coming up so soon.  If you are a woman who travels, I want you to know that I am working on building out a bigger, better support system for women just like us. The RTQ Apparel website is going to evolve over the next several months, focusing more on travel advice for professional women who travel for business, building out a community for us to share our experiences and knowledge while continuing to innovate product ideas that can make our lives easier. Stay tuned, and be sure to sign up for our email list, which will start growing and sharing more and more this year. I very much look forward to meeting you and learning from you.

While the WATT Baselayer Kit was designed in a way that allows them to be worn by themselves, they are first and foremost true baelayers. Think of them as technical, long underwear that help regulate your body temperature and heart rate. Amazing, right?! Whenever I travel, I wear the compression tights and body fit tee underneath some other key pieces of my travel uniform. First, I pull on a pair of joggers that are made from a windproof material. When I’m sitting in my plane seat and the air vent is blowing on me, the material helps to keep the cool air from getting through. This pants layer also helps to make me feel more comfortable because I sometimes prefer not to wear leggings all the time.  My next go-to travel uniform piece is a soft, oversized wrap sweater. I’ve had different iterations of this dream sweater throughout my career, but it always serves as a kind of blanket with pockets on my flights. A few of these sweaters have been worn so often that I’ve completely worn them out. It’s my goal to eventually develop a durable and long-lasting wrap sweater for the RTQ Apparel line that will become your favorite, too. Last but not least, compression socks and comfy slip-on shoes round out my travel uniform. RTQ Apparel travel compression socks with silver yarns are probably the next item coming to our website, but since the compression leggings are already providing such a benefit, we’ll be taking our time to get those just right.

Have you ever put on a new outfit, looked in the mirror and thought, “Damn, I look good!” It changes your entire day. There’s a little swagger in your walk and a knowing smile on your face because you just feel so great. The confidence that an amazing fitting outfit can give you is like nothing else. When the RTQ Apparel wear testers started sending me messages letting me know they were feeling this way in their WATT Baselayer Kit, I was ecstatic! The black compression fabric is hugging them in all the right places, causing them to spend a few extra minutes in front of the mirror whenever they put it on, turning to see their body from all different angles.  Imagine having this feeling whenever you travel for work. Confidence in abundance before your flight and any meetings you have that day could turn into a great presentation, a win-win deal or your best job interview. When we feel good about ourselves, the opportunities to exceed expectations are endless.  Confidence is defined as:a feeling of self-assurance arising from one's appreciation of one's own abilities or qualities. Let’s appreciate all of our assets every day, especially our asses in our compression tights!

Production units have arrived and we are starting to fulfill pre-orders to ship this weekend! I’ve been working hard to organize all of the garments for easy packing and shipping, and I’m so proud of how everything turned out. My only regret is missing out on the branding update we made late last year, so this production run has previous branding on the label. If you end up getting one of the first production run garments, they will be collector’s items some day with the old branding on them! Ha! We are also taking this opportunity to update the RTQ Apparel website with new pricing. Using a very technical fabric from Italy that incorporates all the benefits of silver yarns, I still hold fast that the value of the WATT Baselayer garments are extremely high. But the more that we hear from our community, the more and more I want to be able to help professional travelers by getting the garments into more hands. More accessible pricing means it’ll be easier to buy for more people. Make sure to check out the updates on the product pages today! https://rtqapparel.com/collections/all

The very first trip that my husband and I ever took together was to Montego Bay, Jamaica. We were just dating at the time, and were on a tight budget. We had heard about all-inclusive resort vacations, and thought it might be something fun to try together! Living in Ohio at the time, our ability to fly to an island in the Caribbean was ideal. We did a ton of research together and ended up choosing the Sandals Resort on Montego Bay. It had a great room rate, beautiful weather, along with exotic food and drink menus. I think we booked the entire week-long trip for $1,300 (granted this was fifteen years ago now…) We split the price between the two of us, and packed our bags. Never having vacationed with just a significant other before, I had the most amazing experience. We learned so much about each others’ relaxation styles on this trip, and found our compatibility exponentially growing. While so many people like to go on adventures and go sight-seeing on vacation, it became quickly apparent that we both take our “do nothing” time pretty seriously. Taking naps in hammocks, sleeping in late every morning, lounging by the pool and counting a lazy stroll on the beach as the day’s exercise were on both of our priority lists. We took great care to maximize our unlimited food and drink allocation each day, and definitely got our money’s worth in the form of “hummingbird” frozen drinks and jerk chicken sandwiches. The best part of this trip was our room location. We were situated on a high floor with a small balcony that overlooked the pool area. After one of our first days laying by the pool, where activity concierges tried to get us to play games and participate in group dance parties, we decided to try a day on our sunny balcony, people watching. This became the absolute best entertainment. Watching the fun without having to move our own bodies too much was perfect. (Introvert alert!) We would take turns going down to the resort bar or restaurant to grab food and drinks and bring it back up to the room. Then, in the evenings, when the daily activity schedule was complete, we would head back downstairs to enjoy the empty hammocks and listen to the steel drums playing on the pool deck.  Not long after this trip, we bought a condo together and got engaged. I still believe that trip to Jamaica was an essential part of us knowing whether we were right for each other. And while our vacations have evolved quite a bit over the last fifteen years, our need to “do nothing” on certain trips is becoming more and more necessary. It’s great to have someone who feels the same way traveling with you, as that really leads to true relaxation.

In one of my most recent mentorship calls, someone asked me how to fix an issue with a garment they were reviewing that had puckering and gathering at the seams. Unfortunately, the workmanship from the factory was not of the highest quality, and left room for improvement. As someone new to the industry, they were not quite sure how to advise the factory to fix the issue. First of all, I want to commend this person for wanting to offer a solution to the problem. I will say from experience that most factories will be able to review a photo that you send them and make their own suggestions. This is definitely a solution you can use if you're not sure how an issue could be fixed. But in this instance, she was absolutely correct that offering a possible solution could get her a much faster result on her next prototype. Here is what I told her: nine times out of ten, poorly sewn seams that cause puckering and gathering on your garment are caused by incorrect thread tension. Sewing machines are set to specific settings for each fabric and for each garment that is made. If a factory is working quickly through a production run, they might have missed a setting on a machine, and it could be causing the thread to pull at the fabric. Sometimes, it can be good enough just to ask your factory to improve thread tension while sending a photo of the issue. To go beyond this simpler solution, another feature that you can look at is the stitches per inch throughout your garment. Stitches per inch (or SPI) are most often indicated on tech packs that request decorative stitching in one way or another. For example, when I worked on rodeo apparel, it was very trendy for the denim back pockets to have intricate stitching details to add a unique flair to each piece. We would use extra thick threads with very small SPIs so the threads looked like embroidered yarns. Many years ago, when I was an intern in the apparel industry, part of my job was counting stitches per inch on all of the garments I was responsible for. I would get out my ruler or measuring tape, line it up against every single row of stitching on my garment, and then manually count out how many stitches per inch were on all of my seams. If you're experiencing puckering or gathering on your seams, you can turn to this technique to advise your factory even further on improvements. If you are seeing puckering on your garment and you count ten stitches per inch on the seams, you can ask your factory to reduce your SPI to seven or eight and you should see an improvement. The trickiest part of stitches per inch to understand is that the bigger the number is, the smaller the stitches are. If you need to fit twelve stitches into an inch those stitches are going to be much tinier than if you're trying to fit six stitches into that same inch. So reducing your SPI is actually making your stitches bigger, which makes the needle penetrate the fabric less times, resulting in improved seam appearance.

I am not a scientist, nor will I claim to be one. Many of the notes below will come from credible sources, which will be recognized and noted. As I have been working on the RTQ Apparel WATT Baselayer kit, I’ve learned so much more about EMF Radiation, but much of the information out there is slow to develop and reach a wider audience. If you’d like to learn more about the topic, I encourage you to head to any reputable websites to develop your own thoughts and opinions. _____________________________________ So what is EMF Radiation? The World Health Organization website says, “Electromagnetic fields (EMF) of all frequencies represent one of the most common and fastest growing environmental influences, about which anxiety and speculation are spreading. All populations are now exposed to varying degrees of EMF, and the levels will continue to increase as technology advances. Electromagnetic radiation has been around since the birth of the universe; light is its most familiar form. Electric and magnetic fields are part of the spectrum of electromagnetic radiation which extends from static electric and magnetic fields, through radiofrequency and infrared radiation, to X-rays.” Essentially, EMF Radiation surrounds us in many ways, every day of our lives. Most instances of it are considered to be low-level and harmless, but as we all adopt more technology into our lives, our bodies experience additional exposure. As with almost all unverified studies, there are people and groups on both sides of the spectrum on this topic, and everything in between. A large group of people do not concern themselves with worrying about EMF Radiation at all, nor do they believe that it is a health concern. On the opposite side, there are other groups who claim EMF Radiation is causing cancer in humans and is causing extreme damage to our bodies. I have to admit that I’ve heard very little about EMF Radiation in a wider arena of news and information in the US. As I’m learning and reading more about it, the US Government is fairly adamant that EMF Radiation has little to no extreme effects on our health, although they have validated a few studies regarding health issues for children (1). Many European countries have mandatory EMF radiation regulation laws in place for places of work, while others (including the USA) have kept all regulations voluntary (2). So what should we believe? What is true?  I’ve heard on certain podcasts and read in some articles recently that people who have studied EMF radiation at length are starting to recommend that you limit your exposure to your cell phone more and more, especially at night. Instead of leaving your phone on your bedside table, they were recommending that you turn on its airplane mode while you sleep, to reduce the amount of EMF radiation exposed to your body during these important sleeping hours. Now, those same sources are starting to advise that we completely turn our phones off or keep them in a different room at night.  I also closely follow a few other apparel brands who sell garments lined with silver yarns, and the number of studies, data, information and reports they provide on their websites are surprising and staggering to me. While reading through them, there have been many studies that prove the benefits of blocking EMF Radiation from entering your body. Most of the protection results with a regulation in your heart rate that is noticeable. Heart rate regulation leads to many of the other health benefits that we experience when we wear silver yarn apparel: improved sleep quality and duration, reduced anxiety, body temperature regulation, and improved circulation. The health benefit most interesting to me though is the reduction in the effects of jet lag, which makes these garments so great for my travels. Now, I’ve traveled in my WATT baselayer kit twice now and I’ve been wearing the garments in my regular daily life since receiving wear test samples. I do not have a scientific way of testing my health while wearing the garments yet, and I have skin in the game to be able to produce positive results. So this next sentence could be a bunch of nonsense, and I encourage you to do your own research and testing… But I notice a difference in my stress levels when I wear the garments all day. The little bits of anxiety that usually come to me before a sales call or before recording a video don’t show up as much when I’m wearing my kit. I’m going to continue testing of course, and hope to hear from all of you soon whether you notice a difference when you wear your WATT baselayer kit, too! 1 -  https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/radiation/electromagnetic-fields-fact-sheet   2 -  https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/indicators/indicator-details/GHO/legislative-status

We’ve mentioned a couple times here at RTQ Apparel that our new WATT Baselayer kit creates a Faraday Cage around your body, to help protect you and provide health benefits during travel. But what is a Faraday Cage? Online sources define it as: “A Faraday Cage operates when an external electrical field causes the electric charges within the cage's conducting material to be distributed so that they cancel the field's effect in the cage's interior.”  Essentially, that means that when outside forces try to penetrate the cage, the metal grid disperses and redistributes the energy before it can do so. And importantly, vice versa, too. If you took your phone inside a Faraday Cage, for example, you couldn’t make a call or get a signal from outside of the structure. So instead of allowing the electromagnetic field (EMF) waves to enter into your body, the silver yarn mesh grid in our fabric keeps that from happening. Instead, it detects the waves and disperses it across its own surface area instead of allowing it through the fabric. Many people associate Faraday Cages with Nikola Tesla, who experimented with electricity and lightning quite a bit when he was creating his Tesla Coil in the late 1800’s. He’s portrayed in several movies experimenting with Faraday Cages where lightning strikes the cage but cannot affect a person standing inside its metal mesh surroundings. There is also a great scene in the movie with Johnny Depp, called Transcendence, where he creates a Faraday Cage for his wife out in her garden so she can’t receive a cell phone signal when she’s there and wants to truly disconnect. Faraday Cage enclosures are typically made of either silver or copper wires, and our extremely intelligent materials partner, Taiana, developed a soft fabric solution that can now be made into clothes using similar technology. When I met with them on this fabric, they talked about all of the tests they ran with the spacing of the silver yarns to ensure a soft drape, silky hand and usable stretch. Getting this beautiful mix of wearability out of a highly technical fabric that provides health benefits is just amazing to me! I knew I needed to bring their research, paired with my travel uniform to the world.  When we travel, especially when we're on the airplane, EMF radiation waves are surrounding us at all times. And the wonderful thing that this silver yarn grid does on the fabric is to help protect your internal organs and your body from those EMF waves getting past the cage that surrounds you when you wear our WATT Baselayer Kit.  Stay tuned for next week’s blog and vlog post, where we're talking a little bit about why it's important to repel that EMF radiation and what that can do to help you during your travels.

Being in the fashion and apparel world for the last 20 years of my career, I always had a special place in my heart for France. A fashion capital of the world, Paris was at the top of my bucket list for decades. I finally got the chance to visit in the Summer of 2019, but my obsession with the region started at a much younger age. Back in high school, I decided that it would be a brilliant idea to take French as my foreign language requirement. I was certain that I would need to spend years of my fashion design career fluent in a language that was surely to be used on a daily basis. I loved learning the French language. My classmates and I would walk through the hallways of our school, whispering in French so that the other students around us couldn't understand what we were saying! And by our fourth year of French, we would sit in the back of the classroom and gossip throughout the entire class, but our teacher was just so thrilled that we could do it all in French that she never yelled at us. When I was 17, I started dreaming in French and that was when I knew I had reached a level of fluency that would carry me through my fashion career for years to come. Fast forward 20 years, and I've only used French in my career a handful of times. I've also unfortunately lost most of my fluency in the language. Although, every once in a while, a phrase or two will come back to me and make me smile. I have interacted with French sales teams in a couple of key roles, and my French learning helped me to pick up Italian quite quickly when we started manufacturing a lot of our products in the Venice region. RTQ Apparel has building blocks that come from the Como region of Italy, and this was another one of the few but memorable instances where I could use those language skills in my work. One of the highest quality fabric mills I have ever seen, Taiana is dedicated to the science and development of unique fabric solutions for athletic apparel, travel apparel and work-wear. Their fabrics are made on high quality looms just blocks away from their beautiful office near Lake Como. It is the exquisite quality of their goods that makes me 100% confident in the garments I've made using their materials, and I feel just a little bit closer to them when I can pick up and speak a little Italian. My travel adventures have taken me through Rome, Naples, Nice, Paris, Venice, Milan and the island of Capri. These are some of my favorite memories, and I’ll tell you one of my husband’s favorite stories to tell about our day at the farmer’s market in Nice: As we were browsing the booths at the farmers market, we came up to a merchant selling raspberries, strawberries and blueberries. Drumming up a little courage, I decided to ask about the price in Italian. But my question came out in Spanish. The merchant responded to me in Spanish, at which time I realized my mistake and apologized in French. I then went on to ask again about the price, but this time it came out in Italian. He laughed, and gave me my answer in Italian. This time, I apologized in English and made fun of myself a little bit. He also laughed, told me what the price was in English and we continued our conversation with ease. After a while, we walked away with some of the most delicious strawberries! Moral of the story? I suppose there are a few: If you choose to still learn French, Italian or Spanish anyway, keep up your skills so that you don't lose them over time. I wish I had kept my French skills intact. When you travel for work, do your best to practice a little before you depart. Remember what region you're in, and try to stick with a single language. People all over the world seem to know more languages and constantly impress me with their fluency in English. I always recommend learning a few phrases in the language of whatever country you're planning to visit, but don't be afraid to travel for language reasons. People are kind, gracious and understanding. They might even be able to pivot and speak four different languages with you at any given time. I have proof of that!