We were lucky to catch up with Sabrina Sabatini recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Sabrina thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Some of the most interesting parts of our journey emerge from areas where we believe something that most people in our industry do not – do you have something like that?
Most people believe that to have a small business/brand especially when it comes to making garments and things that everything they create needs to be in this brand “identity” or that every design NEEDS to follow the brand style. I don’t find this to be true. Creatives are never meant to be put into a box especially by one they are creating themselves. From someone who struggles with racing thoughts and mental instability I found myself putting my designs into this box of what I thought needed to do to become successful, trying to focus around one style and realized that it wasn’t for me. I started creating clothing to be free, and coming from someone who spends hours on certain projects I made the decision to not focus on just one theme of clothing. That I would be happier being a jack of all trades.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
My last year of high school I was clueless on what to do. I had six months before graduation and was torn between going into a career in criminal justice work, for some reason I was drawn to it but I also had this creative side to me that needed to be tamed. I chose the art route and went to school at Philadelphia university on a whim. At first I didn’t like fashion design atleast the sewing end. I hated sewing and it hated me. With no prior experience in sewing I failed my first sewing class. It was that summer I was stuck in summer school retaking the class and started to find my love for design. I had no sewing talent at first, but with hours of trial and error sleepless nights and discipline the talent began to grow. It was my senior year I started to go under the original name of my brand “ace octavo”it was a very slow start for me as it took years to learn the hoops of what I wanted to be as an artist. My true love has always been metal and that’s what I mostly provide for my clients and viewers today. I help walk my clients through an entire customized design experience, including fittings, custom color options, different metal/fabric options to make sure that the client has a piece that they also get a say in. When the product is done and with the clients approval I also host a photo shoot session of the piece where I also photograph them myself. I do all of the photography on my page myself for my projects which funny enough is another class I almost flunked out of.
My main goal in my career is to become a performance-wear designer ( creating things for music artists to perform on stage with or for editorial photography use )
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
There came a point in my career where I found sewing certain items was just not profitable for me. While I loved certain products, some people couldn’t understand why they were priced so high compared to fast fashion brands. I decided then to pivot more towards making custom metal pieces because they were so different and more profitable for the brand to sell.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
This one is easy. Overcoming failure. As I mentioned previously I failed my first sewing class and almost failed photography. I kept a devotion to my craft and did not let failure beat me down. This even is relevant to seeing certain pieces. They will not all come out perfect, not every sketch will meet its outcome and it’s OKAY. some projects are meant to go bad to test how much you really want to succeed in it.
Contact Info:
- Website: Www.aceoctavo.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/acexoct?igsh=YzVkODRmOTdmMw%3D%3D&utm_source=qr
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/me?trk=p_mwlite_feed_updates-secondary_nav
Image Credits
Sabrina Sabatini