Today we’d like to introduce you to Hannah Schnabel.
Hi Hannah, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
As a precocious child, I used to put on plays with my siblings and force my parents and their friends to watch our dreadful renditions of The Little Mermaid, bible stories, or a circus featuring our bumbling little bodies catapulting through space. Not only did I star in these escapades, but I also was the resident costume designer. The linen closet became a wardrobe, sheets became gowns, and towels became turbans or capes.
This theatrical flair continued as I aged. Theater became my life, and costumes became how I made money on the side throughout college. Costuming paved the way to making custom corsets for friends out of old denim, and that then morphed into designing garments for myself and private clients met through my work at Nordstrom in Seattle, WA.
Between 2007-2012 I costumed roughly 45 theatrical and film productions and also built a network of people I styled for regularly. In addition, I had been working in retail since 1998 as a salesperson and stylist. It was through my work as a stylist –helping people re-do their wardrobes and define personal style– that I found my calling: designing clothing for plus-size women.
It became glaringly obvious that my clients over a size 14 faced a serious dearth of options in the retail world. A lot of tears were shed between my clients and me as we struggled to find beautiful clothing that fit their bodies appropriately.
After comforting one too many women in fitting rooms, I decided I needed to go back to school and get my degree in Apparel Design and Development. At 30 years of age, I found myself in the classroom, learning the correct way to design and develop clothing for manufacturing and starting a journey that is rewarding, painful, exhausting, and purpose-driven.
After graduation in 2015, I launched Belle Ampleur: Fearless, Aspirational, and Dramatic clothing for women sizes 14+. This was a labor of love, and I learned how to build a brand through this process. I designed and made every single garment myself, from the patterning all the way to the website and marketing. Through this process, I began to refine my design sensibilities and discover my voice, my point of view. I worked with bodies that most companies would not –and could not– design for. I learned how to adjust what I learned in school to accommodate bodies that did not match a mannequin with perfect proportions. I learned how to stand strong in my artistic vision. I learned how to fail in a way that made me a better designer.
I closed Belle Ampleur in 2020 after five years of struggle, extreme expense, and little profit. I learned that I have a long way to go before I am ready for all the challenges of running a retail business. This experience has made me a better designer, able to understand the needs of a business that is growing, and given me the confidence to move forward into helping others until I am ready to re-launch a business of my own.
In November of 2019, I upended my life in Seattle, WA where I had lived since 2007, and moved to Pomona, CA to be the Director of Product Design for a Halloween costume company. This role provided me the ability to move to California, start a new life at 37 years old, and stretch my creative muscles in a new way.
Life then came to a standstill, as the pandemic forced the company to lay me off, putting me out of work, leaving me feeling isolated. I knew only two people in the LA area when I moved here, and this was a really emotional loss for me. Sadness couldn’t keep me down for long.
This period of loss allowed me to connect with Jen Wilder of Wildest Wilder and the Plus Bus, assisting her business in designing, developing, and producing small batch apparel for start up brands here in Los Angeles and across the US.
Another incredible connection I have made is with Oddli, a sustainable fashion brand based here in LA. I do all their initial patterns, product development, assist with sourcing and production management, as well as consult with them on how to run a fashion brand. I am so proud of the work I do with them, and I see huge things for them –and me– in their future.
Life has taken me on a wild ride, but I keep creating, keep growing, and keep becoming who I am meant to be.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Struggle is a part of the process. You cannot make good art without it. I have lost jobs, moved three states away from my support system and family. I have been so poor I almost lost my home. I have worked four jobs at a time to keep my vision alive. I have had three nervous breakdowns from overwork. I have experienced a failure of a business that I had poured all my time, emotion, and money into for years. I have had to navigate the ending of a ten years relationship while starting of a whole new life that didn’t provide the security I thought it would. I have been unemployed for a full year now while living through a pandemic with almost no friends and in a new place to which I have few ties.
I have sacrificed my health, physically and emotionally, for this dream. I have faced ridicule and derision from people on the internet when centering fat bodies in my work. I have been told that fat people should not receive beautiful clothing that fits them because it will reward them for being fat. I have been told that I will not succeed if I haven’t “made it” by 30.
I am turning 40 next year, and I feel that I am just now learning my true power. I am just now understanding who I am and what I have to say to the world. I am just now understanding how to speak unapologetically and stand in my convictions.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I am a designer who wears many hats. Professionally, I design, develop, and produce apparel for brands. I have run teams in China, I have produced for tiny micro businesses, as well as larger mass manufacturers. I make the pretty pictures come to life.
My specialties are: plus sizes, startup brands, and costuming. I am highly creative, utilizing a broad design language built over the years in theatre, film, and retail to bring humor and delight to my designs. I love color, rarely designing in black. The world is so full of color, and I want to capture it all!
Color is just one tool I use. Texture is another. When looking at my collective body of work, I am struck by my ability to combine unusual colors and textures, interweaving disparate fabrications to make a harmonious whole. My garments feel painterly, the strokes made up of fabric rather than pigment.
My proudest accomplishment…I am not sure if I have one. Each new accomplishment is my proudest. They are stepping stones. I look back at my path and see it littered with stones that meander: some wobble and lead me in a direction that perhaps was not the most direct route to my destination but revealed to me new ideas I would not have otherwise explored. Some are large, resting places I regathered my strength and lived with for a while. Others still are high above the torrents of life, elevating me to a place to view the past and see how far I have come and how far I have yet to go.
Setting me apart from others is my ability to continually humble myself to the work. I see the flaws in sharp relief until time has dimmed the painful realization of my lack of skill into a fuzzy memory of the lessons learned when creating. I am never satisfied. I am continually mortified by my work and struggle to see its own successes. I am not a narcissist who can believe in their work and its infallibility. I sometimes wish I were so that I could boldly present my work and have others buy into its perfection. I think life would be much easier that way. Instead, I am ashamed of it, even when I know it is good work. I want it to be better. I want to be better.
What has been the most important lesson you’ve learned along your journey?
Keep failing. Always. If you aren’t failing, you aren’t moving the work forward.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: www.hannahschnabel.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hannielynn1/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HannahSDesigner
Image Credits:
Norm Bowler, Beth Olson, Danielle Barnum
