From Tom Boy to Sparkle Queen

From the mind of the ‘Chief Sparkle Officer’

🙋‍♀️I grew up in a family of five where my parents were just kids themselves and believe or not they were hippies. I felt like hte ‘Alex P Keaton’ of the Vernon’s most of time. I knew at an early age I wanted to go to college, travel the world  and own my own business. This didn’t all happen over night but in time I achieved all of the early goals. It was actually quite hard at the beginning. To start we were always moving and I was bullied for being the strange kid who wore used clothes (this was before Vintage was cool), basically I could never really fit in.

🚚

I actually moved 14 times before I went to high school. However, all of these experiences have given me an opportunity to understand people more and to truly just be myself.

🌳⚽️🚗

I started my childhood climbing trees, playing kickball (remember we had no cell phones) and playing Matchbox cars in the dirt with the local boys. 

🌎

When I wasn’t outside I was in the house hiding from the world, working on puzzles, reading encyclopedias and collecting stamps. I loved all of the countries and the culture and the history that was portrayed in those beautiful stamps. So as a ‘super geek’, I used to go to the store every week after I was paid from my paper route and sit for hours selecting my new favorites. It was my way of traveling and being exotic while living in my tomboy world.

Before I started working (my first job was a paper route in New Jersey) my mom made all of our clothes. She was so creative and I remember I loved to go with her to garage sales, flea markets and vintage shops, she found inspiration everywhere.

🎶

A distinctly recall watching MTV music and my love for fashion and self expression was born. You can thank Duran Duran and Pat Benatar. It was a way to live a life of fantasy, dream of travel and still be in the present.

💥⚡️

For me it was discovering beautiful textures and colors . And so even at 13 it i started adding a little sparkle or ‘flare to give me confidence. Adding a zip to your step, that was kind of my way. I wore vintage clothes in high school. I used to dream of the stories of where they were worn. I guess that’s the part of history that I am intrigued by and period films aree cmketely mesmerizing to me.

🇬🇧

When we finally moved to the North Shore of our places, I started to just be myself. New Trier was a very large school and I was able to just fit into multiple clicks of people and find my way. I discovered that fashion music and culture is what drives me. I was inspired to travel abroad and I studied in London, my junior college. It was my first travel that gave me the bug and showed me there are so many other experiences out out there ahead of me.

🌎

The one thing that I wanted to share on this journey was why decided to open up a fair trade focus global boutique, See Jane Sparkle part deux (for those who know me my first SJS boutique was in Evanston 2012-2017.  

🙏

It is to truly to pay it forward and make an impact for those individuals primarily women that deserve better. I know in my heart that in my 30+ years in design, working for big corporations for 17 of those years, traveling the world was the path I was supposed to take.

💡

Another big aha moment to share was the idea of opening up a boutique again wasn’t immediately my vision, however as I started to partner with a female owned mission driven fair trade company the last three years, I truly saw how one person can make a difference. 

👱🏽‍♀️🇮🇳 👩🏽‍🦰🇬🇹👵🏼🇻🇳

These countries these women need to know we have their back. They deserve to be entrepreneurs like we are here and market their services and products. They deserve to send their kids to school, build their dream houses and not have to choose which child eats for the day. And the horrible, horrible things I have seen just because someone is born in a different part of the world, doesn’t mean they are less worthy. 

😭🤮

The sex industry is something that is so disheartening and the fact that is a choice for a career for a woman is just beyond sad, again we need to make change. When I was in Bolivia 🇧🇴, where the industry is actually legal there we saw a lot of women don’t have the choice. So what we’re doing by partnering with these co-ops and these artisans is allowing them to have a choice. To raise their families without fear. And then to go the next step and actually have a career path and their passion and share it. The need some SPARKLE 💖 in their lives.

🙌 ✨💖

Empowering One Sparkle At A Time is my passion for SJS and I am honored to have opened another boutique where I can share fair trade and how we all can have abundance of all.

Welcome to the Starlet community!

Xoxo

SJ

Get your sparkle on by contacting us today!