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Transcript Begins:
[INTRODUCTION]
[0:00:08] GM: Welcome to Up in Your Business with Kerry McCoy, a production of flagandbanner.com. Through storytelling and conversational interviews, this weekly radio show and podcast offers listeners an insider's view into the commonalities of successful people, and the ups and downs of risk-taking. Connect with Kerry through her candid, funny, informative, and always encouraging weekly blog. Now, it's time for Kerry McCoy to get all up in your business.
[EPISODE]
[0:00:33] KM: Thank you, son Gray.
[0:00:34] ANNOUNCER: This week on Up In Your Business, we're going to revisit Carrie McCoy's interviews with two voices that have helped shape Central Arkansas's fashion history. Anita Davis, the founder of the ESSE Purse Museum in Downtown Little Rock, and Connie Fails, the fashion designer and boutique owner, plus manager of the Clinton Museum Store, talking about the inaugural dress that she designed for Hillary Clinton.
Anita will talk about the purse collection that started the Museum of the Divine Feminine, and will find out how both women are impacting their community through art, culture, and something called placemaking. First up, a little bit about the beginnings for each of these women, and then we'll dive right into Anita Davis’s definition of placemaking. Anita Davis is first.
[0:01:20] KM: Born and raised in the small town of Murfreesboro, Arkansas, Anita grew up in a time of downtown communities with sidewalks and locally owned shops. She moved to Little Rock, Arkansas and saw a group of old buildings in disrepair at the south end of Main Street. She got inspired to recreate a time gone by and began the decade-long revitalization of what we now call SoMa, or South on Main. At the corner of 15th and Main, Anita is the landlord for the Green Corner Store, Loblolly Creamery, my favorite, and the nationally recognized Root Café.
On the next corner, a block down, she lovingly constructed a sculptor garden and named it after her grandmother, Bernice Garden. In 2013, Anita had the idea of sharing her lifelong addiction of purse collecting into yet another unique and thoroughly modern concept by opening the ESSE Purse Museum, with a private collection of no less than 3,000 period purses. I love that.
It is a pleasure to welcome to the table the shy and creative entrepreneur, Miss Anita Davis. Talk to me about your life in Murfreesboro, Arkansas.
[0:02:32] AD: Well, I was born in 1946. By the time I was 12, it was the 50s. We had three pharmacies and we had three grocery stores. That we had everything we needed. We had a Dairy Queen by the 60s and a Five-and-Dime soda fountains and car, auto dealership.
[0:03:06] KM: Yeah, I love small business.
[0:03:06] AD: Right. Yes. You could walk everywhere. Not that everybody did walk everywhere, but you could. I guess, I was getting a little training in what neighborhoods could be if they weren't the suburbs, where you had houses altogether and then the businesses away from that.
[0:03:30] KM: Which was the rest of the world. We were all moving towards suburbs.
[0:03:33] AD: Yes, yes.
[0:03:34] KM: You were still living in a small town, with small town qualities.
[0:03:41] AD: Yes.
[0:03:42] KM: And conveniences in the community. I like that. You went to a convention, a Main Street convention in Seattle, Washington and found, heard this term called placemaking and it resonated with you. Did you already own the property when you heard this term, or did you hear this term and decide, “I'm going to start buying up property.” Which came first?
[0:04:08] AD: I think I bought the property first, but I was also – I mean, I had already tried to figure out what my part in taking care of the earth was. It's gelled to think about my upbringing in this little bitty town and to see this area that could use some goods and services for the neighborhood. That's how it played out.
[0:04:36] KM: Goods and services. Tell people what placemaking means.
[0:04:42] AD: Well, it's, I guess you would – okay, so in 2004 I bought that property. I've got to tell you the story about that. It's the Bernice Building, and Bernice is my grandmother's name. I looked at –
[0:04:57] KM: Talk about serendipity.
[0:04:58] AD: I know. I looked up and I thought, “I believe this may be the one.”
[0:05:02] KM: A sign.
[0:05:03] AD: Uh-huh. Then in 2005, I bought the property next to it, that State Patrick owned and he moved – he bought property down a little bit further on 15th Street, 15th.
[0:05:19] KM: In Main?
[0:05:20] AD: Uh-huh.
[0:05:20] KM: Okay.
[0:05:23] AD: Then it gave me the opportunity to build the garden and do it sustainably, so that it has a drip system and all that. I'm getting to your question just a minute.
[0:05:33] KM: I’m following. Keep it up.
[0:05:35] AD: Okay. My grandmother was – she had four children and she really didn't get to live in one town for very long. She lived here with her sister toward the end of her life and she worked at Frankie's Cafeteria. Basically, in the south part of our world, they say, that's when a person never got a dinner. It's a old saying that they weren't really honored the way they probably would have been appropriate for her to be honored.
[0:06:12] KM: Why? What do you mean she wasn’t honored?
[0:06:14] AD: Well, I mean, she never got a dinner.
[0:06:17] KM: What do you mean she never got a dinner? What do you mean? Is that a saying she never got a dinner?
[0:06:21] AD: Yes. Right.
[0:06:22] KM: What does that mean?
[0:06:23] AD: It means that she – okay, so when people retire, they either give you a watch back in the old days, or they give you a dinner.
[0:06:31] KM: She never got a dinner. She never got a dinner party, basically.
[0:06:34] AD: Right. Yes, yes. Well, that would be from Little Rock, we would say, never got a dinner party.
[0:06:39] KM: Yeah. But in the south, she never got a dinner. She didn’t get a gold watch. She didn’t get her dinner.
[0:06:42] AD: Right, right, right. She got a garden on Main Street.
[0:06:46] KM: Oh, I love it. I see it now. It came together right there, Anita. Thank you.
[0:06:51] AD: Yes. Okay, so but that's not exactly placemaking, but it is sort of, because that is a place that could be where community gathers. There were several groups. Well, there were several people that contributed to the sculptures. UALR helped us so much, UA Little Rock, the sculpture department, Michael Warwick helped and we had a scholarship fund. Each year, we would get a new sculpture.
We throw a big party and everybody could come and it was free at first. That's placemaking. That is when you can bring people together and also, you offer them things that they need. 2007, here comes Steve LaFrance and Steve Edwards. They did the Edwards food giant. He bought that and improved it, I believe. Then Steve LaFrance did USA Drug. We have groceries and we have drugstore. Then we have some of these quaint little things that we have in our little pocket of the world, from 14th to 15th.
[0:08:17] KM: I read placemaking, the design of – I've read the definition of it. The design of public spaces that reflects the character and the assets of the community. I think that's perfect.
[0:08:25] ANNOUNCER: We'll get back to how Anita Davis's placemaking in the SoMa district of Little Rock, Arkansas, includes the ESSE Purse Museum. But first, we want to get a little bit familiar with Connie Fails, our other guest on the show today.
[0:08:38] CF: I was born in Illinois, but my dad was a traveling salesman. In the first grade, he got transferred to Arkansas.
[0:08:45] KM: What?
[0:08:45] CF: I lived in Paris, Arkansas, Forrest City, Arkansas, Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and then he got transferred to Missouri, and then Oklahoma City, and I stayed in Little Rock. He got transferred after that. I stayed in Little Rock. I loved Arkansas as a grown person.
[0:09:01] KM: What’s your dad sell?
[0:09:03] CF: He worked for the Rexall Drug Company.
[0:09:06] KM: He was a pharmaceutical rep, I guess?
[0:09:08] CF: We could call that today. But back in the day, he was traveling all over Arkansas in his ‘54 Ford, going to little drug stores that were in every little corner of Arkansas, tiny little towns and stuff. It was more than just pharmaceuticals. Their big thing was vitamin, Plenamins, they were called.
[0:09:25] KM: What were they called?
[0:09:27] CF: Super Plenamins.
[0:09:29] KM: Oh, learn something new every day. Never heard of that one before. You ended up going to school in Missouri.
[0:09:34] CF: Yes.
[0:09:34] KM: What was your degree in?
[0:09:35] CF: Art. I started out studying weaving, but – well, I started out actually studying painting and drawing. Then I found out that they had a weaving department, which I'd never heard of. I thought, “Wow, I think like that.” I moved my major to weaving. Then when I was out of school, I was still weaving and I had moved to Little Rock, back to Little Rock and I was teaching, and they had a weaving guild in Little Rock at that time. Then and I had looms in a little house on Monroe Street, I had floor looms and lap looms and every kind of loom. I was doing craft fairs and then I got really bored with it. I thought, “Maybe I need to take a workshop, or something that will get me excited.”
I went to Pennsylvania for a weaver's conference and signed up for this workshop and the woman walked in the room and she said, “Well, I know you're all here to do weaving, but actually, I'm pretty sick of it.” I moved to Denmark on a little island, because I didn't want to weave anymore. She was chairman of Moore College in Pennsylvania and she said – now you have to remember, this is 1975 maybe. She said, “I’m so sick of weaving,” then I started going to essentially a yard sale in Denmark and buying old sheets and linens and things and making clothes.
I thought, “Ah, I think I just connected with that. I know how to do that. I know how to do that. I'm excited again.” I came back to Little Rock in the mid-70s and started going to yard sales, estate sales buying pillowcases, doilies, everything and started making clothing. Sold all my looms. I did that for about three years. Did the old Montessori craft fair that some people remember it was in Robinson Auditorium. A woman in Memphis, and I call her the woman with the James Bond name, Babi Levitt.
[0:11:16] KM: Babi. Yup.
[0:11:17] CF: Babi Levitt was over, because she was always seeking out new artists and something exciting, and she had a eclectic store in Memphis. Then after she had the eclectic store, she had a very Sheik store with very designer types of clothing and she still bought my stuff, but she came and I had taken a break from my little booth and I came back and I said, “What happened?” The person watching my booth said, “We sold all your stuff.” I said, “To who?”
[0:11:44] KM: To Bab.
[0:10:24.7] CF: To Bab. To Babi. Yeah. I caught up with her and she left her card and I called her and she said, “I just like you to drive over to Memphis and talk to me about what you're doing.” I said, “I'll do that.” I went over to Memphis and I was in my 20s and went into her lovely office, which was so Sheik and stylish. If you even look at my office today, it's an artist's office, it's got stuff piled up and it's everywhere.
She looked at me and she said, “Have you ever heard of a store called Henri Bendels in New York?” I said, “No.” She said, “Well you will.” Fast forward from that, in about four or five years from that, I guess I was in Henri Bendel's Christmas catalog with my clothing.
[0:12:28] KM: You were making these clothing out of sheets?
[0:12:30] CF: At that point, I transitioned into using scraps, because I was buying fabric by then and I was using the scraps to make my signature mark garment, which was a kimono. I was making things that you may have bought in my store, dress, shirt and I'll say here, it's just so – it's nostalgic and it's funny and it's comforting, even in the museum store when people will walk in and some people won't know that I'm doing that, and I'll say, “Hello.” They go, “Look, I'm wearing your dress.”
[0:13:05] KM: Today?
[0:13:05] CF: Yes. So many people like you are still –
[0:13:07] KM: Like me.
[0:13:08] CF: It’s just like, “Really? Are you as crazy?” Anyway, when I was making those dresses, those pants, those shirts, I had a had big boxes full of the scraps, because I was always recycling in my life. My great-grandmother worked in the garment district in Decatur, Illinois. When everybody went to visit and they wanted to get rid of me she'd say, “Connie Lee, go to the basement and dig in the scraps,” so I did. I was six or something like that. That's how curbside was a natural evolution.
[0:13:36] KM: Yeah. Really.
[0:13:37] CF: I just thought, “I can't throw these little pieces of synthetic beautiful-looking silk, or the real silk away.” I thought, “What do I love? What is most about me?” Issey Miyake in Japan. I thought, “I'm going to try kimono. I'm going to make a kimono that's mine, the way I would make a kimono.” That launched my career with Henri Bendel's.
[0:14:01] KM: It's lovely the way you use fabrics. The front will be one fabric, the arms will be another fabric, the back will be another. Sometimes even the front will have two different patterns on the front, the top and the bottom. Mine does. I have two of them.
[0:14:12] CF: That was my signature mark, too, of mixing things when people didn't do that. How I raised a child that always wants her, she's de métro dress and her shirt and everything, I have no clue.
[0:14:22] KM: Let's talk about –
[0:14:22] CF: That's what our children are like.
[0:14:23] KM: Let's talk about your children.
[0:14:24] CF: Okay. We’ll do it.
[0:14:25] KM: Nobody probably – this is what makes – you are a true hippie. I knew you when you're a true hippie, and you had your store above the run of the mill, and we'll talk about that after the break, but you also have adopted two children. Tell everybody about your children. This just speaks volumes about Connie Fails.
[0:14:45] CF: Oh, well. The diagnosis for me was infertile. I’m like, “Okay.”
[0:14:52] KM: But not true.
[0:14:54] CF: Turned out to be not true. That's what they say happens, so be careful when you go camping. My friend who was a therapist who was – I mean, when people can't have a child and they really want to have a child, and I'm going to tell you what that really means in a second. It's just heartbreaking. You're trying to cope with it and figure out how to get over that, or where do you go, or what do you do.
Finally, I thought my friend, and I was paying her. “I would pay you to help me with this deal.” She got so frustrated and she stood up one day and she said, “This is our last session. Here's what I know.”
[0:15:31] KM: This is your fertility doctor?
[0:15:32] CF: No, this is my – a therapist. Who was my good friend also. I said, “Help me. Help me get over this.” She stood up and she said, “This is our last session and here's what I want to say to you. What you really want to do is parent, and I know you'll figure out how.” That got me. I went away and I thought, “Yeah, that's it. I don't have any bias about anything.” I don't choose color, ethnicity, race, gender. That wasn't on my plate. I thought, “Okay, I'm going to go do an adoption.”
Then it was interesting to find out how hard it was to do adoption. I'm Jewish. If you're Jewish, somebody on the other side doesn't want to give you something that you're going to raise like that. Then I'm converted, although my family history was Jewish on my father's side, which doesn't count. That didn't work out very well. I thought that, “You know what? I'm just going to another country.”
At that point, Korea was doing a lot of adoptions. I put my application in, it took more than a year. In the meantime, Hillary was my friend already and I said, “I need you to write a letter of recommendation about what kind of parent you think I’ll be.” She says, “Okay.” She says, “To who?” I told her where it was. She said, “Why aren't you adopting here in the states?” I said, “Oh, we can have a learning lesson on this one together, so you need to know where that is.” Our children were stuck in foster care, DHS, they were just stuck because of reasons that couldn't get signed off on.
Anyway, I adopted Hannah and she arrived in Memphis as a 14-month-old. I arrived in Memphis to pick her up as four months pregnant. New law with the adoption agency, you got to fess up if you got a bun in the oven, so it’s okay. Hannah arrived August 12th and Noah arrived January 25th.
[0:17:29] KM: I'll be darned. You didn't stop there.
[0:17:32] CF: I didn't stop there.
[0:17:32] KM: You decided to do it one more time. You adopted one more child.
[0:17:34] CF: I did it one more time.
[0:17:36] KM: This is unbelievable that you did this.
[0:17:37] CF: My friend, Susan, who has adopted in 1954 and we'd lovingly call her the dinosaur of Korean adoptees, and we traveled a lot together. We travel to India, to Romania to do adoption work and I said to her one time, “I think I can do one more kid.” She goes, “Okay.” She calls me one day and she said, “FedEx is going to arrive at your doorstep today. First kid on the tape is yours.” I said, “Oh, great.” FedEx arrives, I put the VHS in, I turn the television on. I hear Susan's voice and I see this little girl, black hair, silky hair and Susan's voice is saying to the interpreter, “Tell her to put the cap on the pen.” The interpreter says in Thai, [sound inaudible 0:18:13]. The little girl doesn't look up. Then a little girl looks up. The interpreters told her three or four times, “Put the cap on the pen.” The little girl looks up and goes – shaking her head side to side, “No.”
They pan back and show a little girl with no arms. She was putting the cap on the pen with her toes. I called Susan and I said – she said, “Oh, great. Did you get the tape?” I said, “I did.” Story on me. I said, “What made you think I wanted a kid with a disability?” She said, “Oh, you must have missed her personality,” and she hung up on me.
[0:18:46] KM: Oh, wow.
[0:18:48] CF: About four years after that with a lot of legal work and stuff, I flew to Thailand with my husband and we picked Kate up. Kate turned 31 in July.
[0:18:59] KM: What made you decide that – you kept looking at the tape and thinking –
[0:19:02] CF: Oh, my heart was there immediately. Partly, I knew that culturally, I'm not sure how it is if life has moved forward, but in Thailand the worst thing you can do, if you just want to tell somebody off, just take your shoe off and show them the bottom of your foot. I thought, this child has no chance.
[0:19:18] KM: Because she has to do everything with her feet.
[0:19:20] CF: She has to do everything.
[0:19:20] KM: She literally eats with her feet. She's so incredibly –
[0:19:24] CF: Well, she drives – she drives a regular car with no special adaptations.
[0:19:29] KM: This girl's unbelievable.
[0:19:30] CF: She's tiny. She's about 4’9”, she weighs about 70 pounds. Quick story, if we have time for this, I was in Walmart one night with her and we were talking to each other and just pay attention, this has just been two years ago or something, we had a chat going on. People will stare at Kate. Kate really doesn't respond to it anymore. This guy was standing there and he just kept staring and kept staring. I’m like, “Okay, I'm going to make eye contact with this.” Hey. I said, “Did you have any questions?” He said yes. He looked at Kate and he said, “Did I see you driving a car the other day?” She said, “Yes.” I was like, “Okay.”
[0:20:07] KM: Oh, I love this girl. I’m glad she –
[0:20:09] CF: Case sealed.
[0:20:09] KM: She live in Little Rock? Where is she living?
[0:20:11] CF: She is. She lives in Little Rock.
[0:20:13] ANNOUNCER: Now you've gotten the brief portrait of both of our guests today, Anita Davis and Connie Fails. We'll be back after the break and start telling you about the impact they've had on the fashion and culture of our city.
[BREAK]
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[EPISODE CONTINUED]
[0:21:00] KM: You're listening to Up in Your Business with me, Kerry McCoy. I'm speaking today with Miss Anita Davis, leading developer of South on Main in Little Rock, Arkansas and curator for her own, ESSE Purse Museum, with a private collection of over 3,000 purses. Now, that was in an article I read that was a few years old. So, how many is it now?
[0:21:19] AD: I'm not telling.
[0:21:20] KM: Oh, gosh. If they weren't adorable purses, we'd call you a hoarder.
[0:21:25] AD: Yes. That's true. If they were all piled up to the ceiling, that could also be a clue.
[0:21:34] KM: Are they piled up to the ceiling?
[0:21:35] AD: No.
[0:21:35] KM: Oh, good. Before the break, we were talking about growing up in a small town and how it affected you and how you liked the community of a small town when everybody else in Little Rock and the bigger cities were moving to the suburbs, Murfreesboro, Arkansas was staying the same. I thought you moved to Little Rock in 2004, but you said you'd been here for a while being an entrepreneur in the Heights area with vagabonds.
Now we're coming up on 2004. You've become the driving force in the development of – developing the whole south end of Main, Bernice Garden, the Lincoln Building, the Sweden Creme drive-in, that's now the Root Cafe and your ESSE Purse Museum.
[0:22:17] AD: The Bernice building where Boulevard and Moxie, that was my very first building and I still own that one. I sold the Sweden Creme building to Kerry and Jack –
[0:22:28] KM: Oh, you did?
[0:22:29] AD: - a year or two ago. I can't remember exactly. After they got the wonderful grant, they really wanted to invest in that property and it made sense to them to buy the property. We really wanted to keep them in the South Main area.
[0:22:48] KM: Anita Davis, can I just say, I love you. That was a very good thing for you to do with them.
[0:22:53] AD: Well, they're just such a boon for our area.
[0:22:57] KM: They're great people.
[0:22:57] AD: Yes.
[0:23:00] KM: I'll quit saying you own the Sweden Creme drive-in, where the Root Cafe is. You did buy it, develop it for Root Cafe and then they have recently –
[0:23:08] AD: Well, I didn't – It was before I even knew about them. It's like, you're pregnant with something, but you don't know exactly what you're going to get and you're getting the room already. That's the way it was.
[0:23:20] KM: I've noticed that all entrepreneurs have that spiritual bent. You just described it perfectly. You're pregnant with these ideas and you just have faith that if you keep growing your idea, it's going to all work out.
[0:23:33] AD: Well, it's really interesting how that happens. It's also interesting that if you identify your philosophy, other people will pair up with you and understand that, “That's my philosophy, too. I want to do that.” It's really just taken care of the land. We want a walkable community, so that we don't have to rely on our car so much. We want to make it slow, the traffic slow down just a bit, so that we can all walk and not be scared that we're going to be hit.
Then also, it makes us pay attention to the litter and the trash that's on the street, so that it's not going down into the storm drains and ruining the fish creek. There's all kinds of opportunities there. The garden is about having more dirt. The dirt takes in the rain and we don't have as much flood. We have beautiful little curb knockouts in our area that are actually planted with a lot of beautiful things.
[0:24:44] KM: What do you mean you have curb knockouts?
[0:24:45] AD: Well, they’re those things at –
[0:24:48] KM: Okay. I know it's radio, it's hard to visualize.
[0:24:50] AD: I know.
[0:24:51] KM: It's along the curbs you have –
[0:24:53] AD: Yes. It's where there is dirt, where you can grow things right there at the corners.
[0:25:00] KM: Oh, little gardens all the way up to the edge.
[0:25:01] AD: Yeah.
[0:25:02] KM: I love that.
[0:25:04] AD: The Business Improvement District takes care of that in our area.
[0:25:08] KM: You've been called an accidental real estate developer.
[0:25:11] AD: Yeah, it was accidental for sure. I had dabbled in this and dabbled in that. Then I thought, time is coming on and you really could make a difference somehow. I had pinpointed a few things that seemed important to me, but how to do them was the question. That's how it all – it seems like, that it's been working my whole life towards something. It's weird how that feels, because when I moved to Little Rock in the 80s, the late 80s, I was real fortunate to get to have a dream teacher, Susan Sim Smith. I really didn't have much influence about my own – investigating my own self. That was a first. I didn't speak up. I was in a group of women for a year before I would even speak. I was a little – you think I'm shy now.
[0:26:18] KM: I do.
[0:26:18] AD: I was practically a mute.
[0:26:22] KM: A mute.
[0:26:22] AD: Yes. Anyway, in the south, it's interesting when you are around women, because there's a lot of competition sometimes. But with this group, I was safe. Anyway.
[0:26:36] KM: You started buying them in 2004, I believe and you bought all the way up to – you started buying piecemealing and buying all the way up, until you bought the ESSE Purse Museum in what year, the building that it's in?
[0:26:46] AD: Oh, that was 2011.
[0:26:48] KM: From 2011 you bought the ESSE Purse Museum. Was that the last building you bought?
[0:26:51] AD: Yes.
[0:26:52] KM: How did that come about?
[0:26:53] AD: Well, I had a traveling exhibit that travelled the United States from 2006 to 2011. It started in Concord, Massachusetts and it ended up in Seattle. It went to a lot of history, small history museums in between and it came to a ham here, historic Arkansas Museum. Bill Worthen rented it. He rented it again, because he said it was the best attended special exhibit that they had. That gave me a clue that whenever it came back from this traveling exhibit, that it might be a good idea to plant it in the SoMa area.
[0:27:38] KM: The name of that exhibit was The Purse and the Person; A Century of Women's Purses.
[0:27:43] AD: Yes. That was right.
[0:27:45] KM: I've never known anybody that had a traveling exhibit ever. Do you get paid to – do people pay you for your exhibit?
[0:27:51] AD: No, you don't. You have to pay the curators yourself. It’s an awful lot of work, because –
[0:28:00] KM: I bet.
[0:28:02] AD: - it is all packed up, it's identified correctly and it's shown, then they curate it and then they put it in a semi-trailer truck. Then they rent it in all these different places. Many of the exhibit companies have went out of business. That was between 2006 and 2011. 2008 was really hard on that business.
[0:28:30] KM: Why?
[0:28:31] AD: The economy.
[0:28:32] KM: Oh, that's right. 2008, the banking crisis.
[0:28:35] AD: Right. Anyway, I knew that if I ever wanted to do anything with the purses, it would give it good promotion, that collection.
[0:28:50] KM: Tell me how you started collecting purses.
[0:28:54] AD: Well, let's see. My mother was quite a fashionista, a clotheshorse and she loved to shop. I was an only child and dragged along past after her. I learned a lot about accessories and shoes and purses and all that.
[0:29:13] KM: How many closets did this woman have, or a room. A room.
[0:29:16] AD: Yeah. Anyway.
[0:29:21] KM: She started really collecting.
[0:29:22] AD: Well, she just bought, because she didn't like anything old necessarily. She just wanted new things. Somehow, I got the gene for an old thing. Anyway, I would go to the flea market, but I recognized the quality that my mother taught me, so that's I guess – When you go to a flea market and you see things that other people don't value but you value, you get excited about it, especially if it's not where you are expecting to find it.
[0:29:54] KM: Why purses?
[0:29:55] AD: I don't know. I don't know. What I do know is looking back, I was being taught when I moved here about the feminine, the divine feminine all in the – Susan was really teaching me all this stuff. Then I was learning how to interact with women in a healthy way. Then I realized that I was collecting a container for the feminine, but I had no idea that any of that was really – I mean, this sounds so crazy, but it's a truth and it's the way it happened.
[0:30:31] KM: The divine feminine. Is that a phrase that can be Googled?
[0:30:35] AD: Yes. Yes.
[0:30:38] KM: I think we should put that on the website, the divine feminine. It led you to where you are today. I've heard you call this in the South Main, the feminine area of Little Rock.
[0:30:47] AD: Yes, because I feel like, it's a warm and friendly place and it is something that has – this whole area has suffered and I feel like, it is a part that really is in need of nurturing and a woman is a nurturer by usually.
[0:31:11] KM: Can't help it. You can’t help it.
[0:31:12] AD: Nope.
[0:31:14] KM: If it's broken, we'll fix it.
[0:31:15] AD: Try to, anyway.
[0:31:16] KM: We’ll try to, anyway. Root Cafe is renovated and they’re in at the corner of Main and 15th or 16th, or where is that?
[0:31:25] AD: 15 Main.
[0:31:27] KM: 15th in Main. Now you decided to buy the building right next door, because your – the person, a century-old woman's persons, your traveling exhibit has done so well, you think, there's a need for this. You put it in. We have to say, the Huffington Post once you did put it in, included it in their list of the world's hottest museums.
[0:31:47] AD: In 2014. Yeah, that was exciting.
[0:31:49] KM: You were right. You were right, because they – I mean, that's nothing to sneeze about. You decided to buy this building and started working on it in 2011. Tell us about that.
[0:31:58] AD: Well, it was Stage Works and John Cook was ready to – he really could do his work not on Main Street necessarily and he was willing to sell his building. He rented back from me for about a year, because I wasn't quite ready to go after that building to redo it.
[0:32:17] KM: Tackle the renovation.
[0:32:17] AD: Yes. Then we opened in 2013, in July.
[0:32:26] KM: What do you think, so it's the divine feminine, and was that just your driving goal, or was it a driving goal to do something with your collection so that you could display it, or what do you think the driving goal was that made it come together?
[0:32:40] AD: I think sharing it was important, because women are not – There's not another Women's History Museum. Basically, that's what it is. Women, it's such a timely manner. We need to celebrate ourselves and honor ourselves. That's what this building is about. We are showing the challenges that women have had throughout the time. We show history decade by decade and we have through 1900 to 2000.
We show purses, what might have been in the purses, photographs of women holding their purses and then a brief history. You can see in the case where the teens is World War I, and it's a very drab somber time and the purses reflect that. Then in the 20s, it's more fun and people are wearing makeup, and so there's makeup in the purses and smoking accessories.
[0:33:43] KM: My favorite.
[0:33:43] AD: Yeah, all kinds of fabulous things. Then 30s also was – it was trying. But women, I went to Washington DC not – well, two or three years ago and there were all kinds of statues and sculptures and everything all about men. It was as if women. I didn't see very many women, things that honored women.
[0:34:12] KM: I never thought about that.
[0:34:14] AD: Well, I took the tour.
[0:34:14] KM: Is [inaudible 0:34:14] not even up there?
[0:34:17] AD: I took the tour. The thing that you can go through the little trolley. Even the person that was giving us the story, the history of our nation –
[0:34:28] KM: Left out women.
[0:34:29] AD: Well, we did play a small role. We were the hostess.
[0:34:37] KM: I do love doing that, I must say. That is nice to be the hostess. Yeah, I think we've done more than that.
[0:34:43] AD: Yeah.
[0:34:44] KM: I have to say, prior to birth control, which you and I remember, it was hard for us to do a lot.
[0:34:51] AD: Yes, of course. Yes.
[0:34:52] KM: I mean, but once birth control happened in the 60s, women's lives changed dramatically.
[0:34:58] AD: Let me tell you this, people donate to our museum. Their grandmother's purses are there. Then when they come in, they tell us the stories. There was a woman who was an artist and she – her daughter, she had just died and her daughter brought these three fabulous purses in and she was telling me about her mother's life. That she paid her own way to school in Denton, Texas. Then she got her – she graduated and she wanted to buy a car and she couldn't buy a car, so she had to move back and get her dad to buy her car, but she paid for it.
I mean, she just moved right on. It was as if she didn't have a lot of hurdles. Then another woman brought her mom's – her great-great grandmother's things and her grandmother, however she was related, learned she was born in the 20s and she learned to fly an airplane and she had her own airplane. This is Arkansas people.
[0:36:09] KM: Then there's Katharine Hepburn. There were a lot of women who really were progressive. Tell us what your favorite purse is.
[0:36:17] AD: I love a purse that's black flannel and it has a great big safety pin. It's like, this big for the handle and its fast.
[0:36:29] KM: That’s 12 inches, you all. She’s holding up 12 inches. It’s the radio.
[0:36:32] AD: It’s this big.
[0:36:36] KM: All right, so it’s how wide? 2-feet wide with a 12-inch safety pin on the front?
[0:36:41] AD: Well, it's not really 2-feet wide. It's deep. It looks like –
[0:36:47] KM: A diaper.
[0:36:48] AD: Audrey Hepburn would have carried it. It's very beautiful and elegant.
[0:36:54] KM: I love the plastic persons stamp at the top, that I guess, they're probably the 40s.
[0:36:59] AD: Yes.
[0:36:59] KM: They don't carry enough today, because today you almost need a briefcase, or a backpack to carry all the stuff you want to carry. I find that very disheartening, because I want to put a person on with my outfit and you almost have to have a person's out of a purse.
[0:37:14] AD: Right. You can lay your purse at ESSE and then you are admonished if it's real heavy.
[0:37:20] KM: Is that true? That's funny.
[0:37:22] AD: Because you hurt your back.
[0:37:23] KM: That's right. Do you carry a lot of different purses, or do you like everybody else –
[0:37:30] AD: I'm very much like everybody else, because I have so many purses. Occasionally, in the store, there'll be one that I think I have to wear this and I just love this one. Before I opened, I'd carried the same, let's see, shoulder bag, I guess it was and for about 10 years.
[0:37:54] KM: When is a bag too heavy? What's the weight that you –
[0:37:56] AD: I can’t remember.
[0:37:57] KM: - that you would say? Okay. What’s the word esse? I looked up the word esse for ESSE Purse. I thought maybe it was your mother's name.
[0:38:02] AD: No, no. It means ‘to be’ in Latin and a woman's purse holds who she is, her essence. You can smell a woman's purse, I mean, if you remember what your mom's purse smell like. Mine was tea rose. My mother's purse was tea rose. You can just remember her essence. And so, a woman's purse is really important as far as holding her identity.
[0:38:30] ANNOUNCER: I hope you haven't forgotten that we've got another guest on today's program. Connie Fails. Definitely a major contributor to the fashion of Little Rock Arkansas. Let's revisit some of the interview with Connie Fails.
[0:38:43] KM: I love talking to you Connie. You' ae just a remarkable woman. When we come back, we'll continue our conversation with Connie Fails and her remarkable life. She's the clothing designer and she was a clothing designer. I guess, once a clothing designer, always a clothing designer. She's the manager of the Clinton Museum Store. We’ll ask her about her honor and the pressure of designing an inaugural outfit for the First Lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton. We'll be back after the break.
[BREAK]
[0:39:10] GM: You're listening to Up In Your Business with Kerry McCoy, a production of flagandbanner.com. Over 40 years ago, with only $400, Kerry founded Arkansas Flag and Banner. During the last four decades, the business has grown and changed, starting from door-to-door sales, then telemarketing, to mail order and catalog sales. Now, flagandbanner.com relies heavily on the internet and live chats with customers all over the world.
Over this time, Kerry’s business and leadership knowledge has grown. As early as 2004, she began sharing her knowledge and her weekly blog. In 2009, she founded the nonprofit Friends of Dreamland Ballroom. Today, she has branched out into podcasts, Facebook livestream, and YouTube videos of this radio show. Each week, you'll hear candid conversations between her and her guests about real-world experiences on a variety of businesses and topics that we hope you'll find interesting and inspiring.
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Telling American made stories, selling American made flags, the flagandbanner.com. Back to you, Kerry.
[EPISODE CONTINUED]
[0:40:32] KM: You're listening to Up in Your Business with me, Kerry McCoy and I'm speaking today with Miss Connie Fails, manager of the Clinton Museum store and director of Curbside Couture, a fashion design competition in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Connie Fails clothing store. When I met you, you were above run-of-the-mill, I bought a slip, I think it was probably made out of a sheet, and it had trim on it that probably came from a pillowcase, and then you decided – you decided to move down the street. Tell us about how you start, for all the entrepreneurs listening out here, how did you decide to start that business there? Where'd you get the money to do it, and then how did you get that leap of faith to move down the street and open up your own store?
[0:41:11] CF: Yeah, it was a leap of faith, surely it was. It was the mid-70s. I worked for a brokerage firm. I was totally inappropriate for a brokerage firm.
[0:41:22] KM: Yeah. I read that in your bio. I was like, “A stockbroker in the 70s.” You should have hung in there, because the 80s were great. You'd be rich right now girl.
[0:41:31] CF: That was worse. I was really the mean person in the back that did the margin calls. If your account was below what we needed, I'm the one who gave the notice to you I needed a check for $20,000, or something. I wasn't very popular and I just didn't – I wasn't able to use my creativity. I used it at night and on the weekends. I had just met the person that would become my husband, Lesly Singer and he was – all for he said, “We just got to try it.”
The woman who was teaching that workshop in Pennsylvania came to visit a year after I did the workshop. She walked in and I said, “Well, I'm not weaving anymore. Here's what I'm doing.” She looked at me and she said, “Quit your day job.” That started the conversation in between Lesly and I. We were not married at that time. Could I just take that leap of faith? It was Arkansas and women dressed – didn't dress like I was doing.
[0:42:20] KM: Nobody dressed like you were doing.
[0:42:22] CF: George Worthon had enough faith in me that he gave me a $4,000 loan.
[0:42:28] KM: Signature loan probably. Back in the good old days.
[0:42:30] CF: Yes. I got those for a long time. The reason the Hillary thing came up is that I had opened my store in August.
[0:42:42] KM: Is this the one above the run-of-mill?
[0:42:43] CF: Above run-of-the-mill. In December, I had a little trunk show. It's the first time I've ever done that of some jewelry. The guy didn't want to take the jewelry home at night, so it stayed. It was Chinese silver, so it wasn't gems or anything like that. That night, I don't know if it's – we have no clue. We never found out how it happened, but someone broke in and arson the building.
I was standing out front of the building with the firemen, my whole upstairs was just charred and burned and run-of-the-mill below had all the water damage and some burn damage and everything. I was standing outside with the firemen discussing and the postman came, and he had a little tiny envelope. I thought, “That's weird. What is that? Looks like an invitation to a baby shower, or something.” I don't know anybody having a baby.
I'm standing there and I open it up and it said, “Dear Connie, you might recognize me if you saw me, but you may not know my name. My husband has just been elected governor. My name is Hillary Rodham and I'd like you to make my gown.”
[0:43:41] KM: You never even met her yet.
[0:43:43] CF: She’d been in the shop. She said, “I come to your shop and bring people from out of town, because I love them to see your store.”
[0:43:48] KM: Wow.
[0:43:50] CF: I actually had a woman who had a sewing business in an old mail truck, a big mail truck, and her name was Elora. She was from Ola, Arkansas and she had been coming around my studio saying, “I'll help you so a little bit.” I said, “I could use that.”
[0:44:04] KM: She's pull her truck right up your front door and sell out of the back of it?
[0:44:07] CF: Yeah. Well, she would come into my store some, but she had her thing all set up is this great studio. Unlike me, she's totally organized with everything folded and pins put away and everything. Now, I didn't have a place to do that and I needed to make Hillary's gown. Elora pulled her mail truck into my driveway on Monroe Street down by War Memorial. We got a big, long extension cord and plugged her into the house, and we did the first gown for – that’s the old Statehouse now.
[0:44:33] KM: Anybody that didn’t think business is creative. It's crazy. We hear those stories all the time. That's very –
[0:44:38] CF: It’s do what you got to do.
[0:44:40] KM: Very ingenious. You made her first gown out of a sewing machine, out of the back of this woman's mail truck.
[0:44:45] CF: Yes. That was it.
[0:44:47] KM: You just can’t make that stuff up. If I ride in –
[0:44:50] CF: Two wild girls. I mean, it all worked out.
[0:44:53] KM: Now it's on display at the old Statehouse.
[0:44:54] CF: It is.
[0:44:56] KM: When did you decide – did you decide to move down the street when the old mills house burned and your place burned? Is that what –
[0:45:02] CF: No, we restored it, but the person who owned run-of-the-mill wanted more room for the business she was doing. I actually needed more room. By that time, I was ready to have a storefront right on the street. I found the little building that was up by Hocots, and Mr. Hocot still owned it, and it was actually three different sections of building. I rented the first section and after about five years, I took over the second section and then eventually, took over the third section, so I had the whole building at the time.
[0:45:34] KM: You had a seamstress there that was sewing on-site at that time.
[0:45:38] CF: I had a cutter, someone that did nothing but cut things from the patterns that I designed and made. Then I had anywhere from – I had two fabulous Ruby and Rose, so worth it, sewed for me forever. Occasionally, I would have a third sewer. It would depend on seasonally, how busy that we were. I would design things, they would get cut, they would get made, then they would just come over into the retail store, be priced and people like you would come in and buy them.
[0:46:01] KM: Then you not just – you didn't just sew your designs. You also went to market and I have to say, your eye for buying fashion was dead-on.
[0:46:10] CF: Thank you.
[0:46:11] KM: You're welcome. I still have some of those pieces. Can't put my big toe in them, but I think they’re garland and I keep them.
[0:46:16] CF: I understand that, too. I do have intuitively good eye about things, about buying things, about – I got the best compliment and I was standing there and didn't know I was going to get it from Scott McGee at a Christmas party, and he was introducing me to somebody who'd just moved to town. He said, “You don't know who this woman is,” he said, “But she had the guts to do the first boutique in a Little Rock.”
[0:46:41] KM: Is that true?
[0:46:42] CF: Yeah. That is so nice. Well, nobody did what I did. Nobody sewed, nobody had that bohemian boutique.
[0:46:48] KM: No, they didn’t.
[0:46:49] CF: That took a risk. In retrospect, if you look, my store was right between. My store was the last store before you went to the Heights. It was nested right between Hillcrest and the Heights, which were so yin and yang with each other, too, and what people's tastes were and how people lived.
[0:47:07] KM: Very much. That’s a great spot, wasn’t it?
[0:47:08] CF: Yeah.
[0:47:08] KM: There was the phone booth up in the Heights, but they didn’t –
[0:47:11] CF: There was.
[0:47:12] KM: They didn't do any, like you said, they didn't do any sewing, or it was a type of boutique but it was nothing like yours.
[0:47:21] CF: Yeah. That was Bliss Thomas.
[0:47:22] KM: Bliss. That’s right.
[0:47:23] CF: Yeah, no one else did that, because I don't know, either maybe you had a – your mom had a sewer that did alterations, or something, but nobody –
[0:47:31] KM: Everybody sewed back then.
[0:47:32] CF: Yeah. No one took the risk to just go off and think that, well, I don't know, that that very different –
[0:47:41] KM: Very different. Very Bohemian.
[0:47:42] CF: Not structured. Sewed your jackets on the outside, instead of inside, or you know. Yeah.
[0:47:48] KM: It's 12 years later and Bill Clinton has been asked to – has been made the President of the United States and you get to design another outfit that's going to be on the world stage. What an honor. How did that come about?
[0:48:00] CF: Well, you can imagine it was a big conversation with friends and family and stuff were saying, “Oh, maybe you'll get to do it again.” I said, “No, she's the First Lady of the United States. It's going to be Fifth Avenue.” I should have and that and I thought, “Are you not listening to your little voice about Hillary? Because she always supports artists. She's always supporting Arkansans.” The next exhibit at the library, which we might have one line about soon is in 1993, she did the first-ever American craft exhibit. She had craftsmen from over the United States.
Anyway, one day she called and she said, “So and so, and I would like to come by and talk to you for a few minutes.” This is after he'd been elected. I said, “Okay, that's great. I'll look forward to seeing you. Haven't seen you since the election and all that stuff.” They come in and the person with her is a whole lot younger, and is an aide and I can tell she's not – it's just not like in a conversation very much, too much. Hillary said, “Well, I'm going to ask you if you would do my clothing for the inaugural.” I said like, “Your clothing-clothing for the inaugural?” She said, “Yes.” She said, “Well, you know I have to do a lot of different things on several days. There will be five or six outfits a day, there'll be the inaugural suit, probably need a coat.” I said, “You don't like the cold. You probably need a hat.” She said, “Yeah, that sounds good.”
[0:49:18] KM: Did you do that blue hat and blue pantsuit?
[0:49:20] CF: It's not a pantsuit. She didn't have pantsuit on. She had a suit on. She had a rose-colored with a blue fleck in it, suit. It was a straight skirt and a jacket and a shirt underneath it. I didn't realize that I chose a fabric before it became popular, that little Tweety fabric with the little square that everybody had a suit out of, and then everybody gave them to goodwill, because they were so, you know. At that point, no one had that fabric. We did that and then we did the blue coat, and then I took a lot of flak for the hat, because people didn't like the hat.
[0:49:54] KM: I loved it.
[0:49:54] CF: I love the hat. I thought it was great.
[0:49:56] KM: I remember it’s – the only thing I remember she wore.
[0:49:58] CF: The hat ended up having its own great story, because of the girl who did the hat in New York. I sent her the swatch of the fabric and I asked her to do the hat and she showed me the styles and I said, “This. Take this down a little bit and make this a little bit like this,” and we got through it all.
Years later, I was at market and I mean, years later like 15 years after that and I was at market and I heard someone saying, “Connie. Connie.” I’m like, “Okay.” I turned around and it was this woman that I noticed earlier that had this incredible big brimmed hat on, it was summer, and a little black-and-white polkadot skirt and the little white shirt and I thought, “Wow, that woman looks really good.” I turned around she says, “It's me. It's Darci. I made the hat.” I was like, “Oh, my God.” She said, “The hat changed my life.” She said, “This guy who was a big hat maker called me after that,” and she said, “I ended up marrying him. I live on Martha's Vineyard.”
[0:50:49] KM: What a good story.
[0:50:50] CF: You had fairy dust all over you, girl.
[0:50:53] KM: That’s good. That is good.
[0:50:55] CF: Yeah, lots of stuff, good stuff came out of the blue hat.
[0:50:58] KM: Was it nerve-racking to know that you're going to be on the world stage like that and be looked at so hard? Or did you ever think about it? Did you have those nights you're like, “Oh, my God. What am I doing?”
[0:51:06] CF: Yeah. Well yes, because the night that Air Force One, they were going to take off the next day, I told my sewers, I said, “You know, we have to finish everything. This is it. However we have to stay here.” Remember, 1992 there's no cellphones, and so we're all sewing and people’s husbands are calling saying, “Yeah, we're still here, we're still here. We're safe. Yeah, we're okay. It’s late, but we're safe.”
Finally, the phone rang in the store and I answered it and it was my husband. He said, “The president just called me. He's concerned about you.” I said, “We're just about to make the delivery,” and it was 2:30 in the morning. I drove everything over to the governor's mansion and I always call him President Clinton. I don't call him Bill. President Clinton came out and he said, “Wow.” He said, “I had secret service out going all over the grounds. I thought maybe, I don't know, you got lost or something out here in the dark.” I said, “No, sir. I’m fine.” I said, “I just need unload these clothes.”
[0:52:04] KM: Down to the wire.
[0:52:04] CF: Get out of here.
[0:52:05] KM: Down to the wire.
[0:52:06] CF: Yeah, it was great. It's like that thing I – of course, my son is a big cyclist, the birth baby in between the girls, and we watched the Tour de France all the time. I look at it like, if I never really – at one time I thought I wanted to go to the tour, but I miss everything if I go to the tour. I'm just standing in one spot for three seconds when the riders go by. Going to the inaugural, it was later when I watched the reruns of the whole thing. I could see the scope of everything, because I just saw a Gertrude Stein quote that I loved, it says, “We're always the same age inside.” I'm always the same person.
You and I were talking about being in the moment. I don't know if I was in the moment, so much as I was in my kids say, la-la-land, and that's why my grandchildren call me la-la. You're just there and it is wonderful and magnificent and that you're like the second row, or the first row and you're watching the president being sworn in. Then later you hear Peter Jennings or somebody saying your name when you watch the tape and I go, “Really?” That's fun. That’s good.
[0:53:12] KM: It’s so good.
[0:53:13] ANNOUNCER: Before we wrap up the show today, one final word from Anita Davis and Connie Fails. Here's Anita.
[0:53:20] AD: I live in the same house that I've lived in for 30 years.
[0:53:23] KM: Oh.
[0:53:23] AD: Yeah. I love my house, but I'm not as social as –
[0:53:30] KM: You're shy. You are shy.
[0:53:32] AD: Well, I'm an introvert, basically. That helps me to have enough time to keep myself sane.
[0:53:40] KM: Right. Right, you need to get away from it. If you were going to tell yourself of 20 years ago something, what would it be?
[0:53:47] AD: Figure out who you are.
[0:53:50] ANNOUNCER: Finally, a gift for Connie Fails.
[0:53:53] KM: We have a gift for you. I know you either just got back from the beach, or going to the beach?
[0:53:56] CF: We just got back.
[0:53:57] KM: Well, that's too bad. [Inaudible 0:53:59]. It's a beach towel that says, “Flagandbanner.com.”
[0:54:06] CF: You know what? We love beach towels at our house.
[0:54:07] KM: I do, too.
[0:54:08] CF: We use them in the shower and bath, rather than a towel tap. Thank you, Kerry.
[0:54:12] KM: You’re welcome.
[0:54:14] CF: Thank you.
[0:54:14] KM: Thank you so much. You have just been –
[0:54:15] CF: Oh, it’s been a joy. Thank you.
[0:54:17] KM: You're great.
[0:54:17] CF: Thank you.
[END OF EPISODE]
[0:54:19] GM: You've been listening to Up in Your Business with Kerry McCoy. Kerry's goal is simple, to help you live the American dream.
[END]
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