It took fifteen years.
I could never have imagined that CO’s first show would take place in Paris on a luminous spring afternoon on rue de Rivoli facing the Tuileries. My extraordinary team. Twenty-two beautiful models. And so many people I love lined up along the walls to watch our woman come to life.
In the days leading up to the show, I felt a strange sensation of levitation. We moved from fittings to castings to production meetings, making hundreds of decisions each day, yet none of it felt entirely tangible. As if I were watching the movie of my life from somewhere slightly outside of it.
Standing in that spectacular Paris apartment during rehearsals, my mind kept drifting back to the beginning.
Los Angeles.
A small house in the Hollywood Hills where my former partner and I first imagined CO.
I remembered the first collection. The first trips to factories. My film community looking at me as if to say, You’re leaving this business to start a clothing line?
I remembered the kitchen walls of my home lined with shelves so we could pack and ship our earliest orders ourselves. And of course, I remembered being pregnant with my son, Jacob.
Everything in my life felt new then, full of excitement and possibility. The stakes had not yet revealed themselves. CO was born in a moment of pure magic, as most worthy things are.
For many years I resisted having a show. I simply did not believe it was necessary. The woman who buys our clothes, I thought, does not sit at home watching runway shows online. She is busy living her life. I cared more about her experience than about the opinion of the fashion industry or the perspective of the press.
There was also the practical reality that shows are extraordinarily expensive. While my background in film production meant I could probably produce one for very little, I always believed those resources were better invested elsewhere.
And yet, last year something shifted.
My former partner was gone. My team and partners encouraged me to take the next step. Moving to Paris renewed my creative energy in ways I had not expected. It became clear that perhaps it was finally time to tell the story of the brand through another medium.
I have always believed that to stay creative we must challenge ourselves, face our fears, and step outside our comfort zones. Otherwise the very thing we create slowly dies. My whole life, it seems, has been about pushing myself into those moments.
From the moment we began preparing the show, there was a feeling of lightness surrounding the process. Synchronicities seemed to appear everywhere. Samuel brought his extraordinary expertise. The design team arrived. The fittings began. The collection slowly revealed itself and through the casting process our woman began to take shape.
Paris, which is usually grey and wet in March, surprised us. Spring seemed to arrive overnight. On the day of the show it was sixty-five degrees and sunny.
Coming from film, I found it almost funny that all this work would culminate in something lasting only seven minutes. But afterward I understood something important.
Those seven minutes put our woman into motion. She came to life in a way she never had before. Each model reflected another facet of her personality.
During rehearsals the models delivered a certain cadence in their walk that I could not understand. It did not represent my woman. Can I direct them? I wondered. I could see something was off, but no one would speak up. So I decided to take charge.
“CO is about a woman who feels her body and her clothes. A woman who fills every collar, waist, and sleeve with ownership. The clothes she wears are simply an extension of what she already feels. CO is there to confirm her purpose. It is the outer shell of her inner state of mind.”
Suddenly everything shifted, not only for them, but for me as well.
My relentless attempt to create this woman had always been something deeper. Through the clothes I was trying to personify an unshakable yet feminine strength and the tension between softness and resilience, between the warrior within me and my own vulnerability.
And suddenly there she was. The cadence appeared. The models were filled with confidence and excitement. They understood. The tension is universal.
As the audience began to fill the rooms and I watched the monitors backstage, I remember smiling to myself and allowing the moment to unfold exactly as it wished. For the first time in a long time, I was not thinking about the past or the future.
CO has been a labor of love. It did not deliver wealth, comfort, or fame. It delivered truth and for that I could not be more grateful.
Whether it continues for another fifteen years or disappears tomorrow, in that moment I understood something simple.
This was a gift.
Gratitude for the work.
For the people who believed.
For the friends sitting in the front row.
For the one who flew from Los Angeles to Paris for twenty-four hours simply to be by my side.
Running a company is a brutal test of resilience. In the months leading up to the show I had been worn down by the relentless pressure of financial success, growth, and the constant demand for more. But in the middle of all that pressure, there was this unexpected light.
The show.
The very spotlight I had avoided for so many years. And perhaps that was the true meaning of the moment.
Not the applause.
Not the photographs.
Not even the seven minutes themselves.
But the quiet realization that sometimes the things we resist the most are the very things waiting to reveal who we have become.
For fifteen years I had built something slowly. Imperfectly. Stubbornly.
And standing there in that sunlit apartment overlooking the Tuileries, surrounded by the people who had carried this journey with me, I understood something I had not understood before.
Whatever happens next, the story of CO will always belong to that simple and improbable act of belief:
That an idea, nurtured long enough with love and persistence, can one day become real.
