3 questions for ... Lisa Gachet Creator of My Make Lemonade
3 Questions for Lisa Gachet
In 2012 she created the Make My Lemonade blog to share her designs and ideas, and she very quickly became a star in the blogosphere. Inspired by this success and new ambitions, she founded the Make My Lemonade brand in 2015. Since then, the brand has grown non-stop and projects flow one after the other. Let’s meet with an upbeat, enthusiastic woman who’s in tune with her era and committed to her mission.
You’re about to launch Frida, your platform for renting apparel. At this key moment could you look back at your development and explain how you went from being a blog to a brand?
I graduated from the Duperré School of Applied Arts and gained experience at Yves Saint Laurent and Bonpoint. I very quickly understood that working for others was frustrating for me. I wanted to make my name, so in 2012 I created the Make My Lemonade blog to showcase what I knew how to do and to share my style and ideas. Six months after it started, I quit my job to give it my full-time attention. In fact, businesses were contacting me to create set designs for events, do window displays, and organise workshops … everything I had ever dreamed about! But after two years, I felt something was missing; I was no longer making clothes. To stay true to Make My Lemonade’s DIY attitude, I came up with a double concept: presenting limited editions of designs along with their patterns. The first pattern was introduced in January 2015, and during that year we produced the first garments with their corresponding patterns. The Make My Lemonade brand was born and the idea was an immediate success. At the same time I organised Make My Lemonade pop-up stores so I could meet my community and showcase my entire brand universe. We had four pop-up stores in two years in Paris, each one lasting around a month. It was very instructive and enjoyable – a convivial way to better understand clients’ expectations and buying behaviour. At that time there were eight of us and we accomplished a lot with few resources. Those pop-up spaces were a kind of dress rehearsal for inaugurating the Make My Lemonade boutique, which opened the end of 2018 on the Canal Saint Martin. It was important that, with that step forward, we didn’t forget the brand’s DNA: presenting a long-lasting wardrobe we don’t tire of and that’s well made with quality fabrics. Today there are between 23 and 25 employees depending on the period and we’re exceeding our growth objectives. That’s clearly motivating for starting other projects such as Frida, our platform for renting clothing (online the end of October 2019), and continuing to encourage reasonable consumption of quality fashion that’s accessible to as many people as possible.
What role does your community play? Who does it include? How do you maintain the connection?
Without the community there would be no Make My Lemonade. We pay close attention to it all the time. Even though we can’t satisfy all the demands, we read and analyse all the comments. This hyper-attention and constant tracking gives us important feedback for adapting and evolving, especially since our community is extremely diverse … and very quick to react. Last June we conducted a survey and got 10,000 responses! Now, of course, I have less time to write the blog I put so much effort into in the beginning, but the connection is still there, especially with Instagram. I’m also in the process of creating a newsletter to tell about the business’s journey and explain our choices. With this platform, I can, for example delve into the why and how Frida was created and speak out in depth on important topics, which can’t be done on Instagram.
What do you think about the fashion industry and its evolution?
Fashion consumption is undergoing an incredible change. We’re at a turning point for ethics and respect for the environment, and that implies a transformation in manufacturing processes. This means the leading brands in the future will be those who are transparent from beginning to end. That’s what we’re trying to do with Make My Lemonade. We want our clients to be our ambassadors, to be proud to wear our designs. We’re not perfect, but we’re setting up a range of initiatives to improve what we do. For example, for part of our collections, we put fabrics into a second production cycle by hunting down end-of-series from the big couture houses. That’s how we make progress every day!