Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast: Making Art Work · Nick Petrella and Andy Heise

#355: Elizabeth Solomeina (Jewelry Designer) (pt. 1 of 2)

·28 min·2 clips

The first racks in the Mulberry Street store were built from Home Depot copper pipes because the designers had no construction budget.

1. Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast episode #355 (part 1 of 2) follows how Elizabeth Solomeina built Flying Solo, a retail marketplace for independent luxury designers, from a Soho pop-up into stores in New York and Paris. 2. Hosts Andy Heiss and Nick Petrella interview Solomeina, a Russian-born jewelry designer, Flying Solo co-founder and managing director, whose Salamina line uses topaz, pearls, and diamonds in art deco and Elizabethan-inspired pieces. 3. Her central argument is that small brands with customers and sales had "no clear path" to bigger retail and press without major financial backing, so ten designers built one themselves. 4. Solomeina's career ran from graphic design at a Moscow studio of 200 people, where she was second youngest, through the British Higher School of Art and Design and the New York Film Academy, into film post-production before she turned to "something more tangible." 5. The first Flying Solo pop-up on Thompson Street was so small that designers had to "go sideways" to reach the back, and shared rent and expenses let the ten co-founders see real customer reactions. 6. In summer 2016, an investor she found through film-industry contacts funded deposits and rent for the Mulberry Street store, and about 30 designers built copper-pipe racks from Home Depot and filled the space with furniture from their own homes. 7. A Women's Wear Daily editor wandered in and wrote a profile, even as people bet the group "would not last a few months" because designers could not collaborate under one roof. 8. For the February 2017 Fashion Week show at Kenneth Cole Studios, the team made an airport theme with yellow-tape runway and flight-board schedule, added protest-style signs such as "we stand united in heels," and carried gear through a snowstorm; the press delay nearly cost them Women's Wear Daily coverage. 9. Solomeina says the group's success model was shared: "when people start succeeding within Flying Solo, all of us become more successful," and she has since produced 41 shows. 10. Suited to aspiring fashion founders and creatives interested in collaborative retail.

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