We were lucky to catch up with Carly Moran recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Carly thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

When I started my vintage clothing business in 2013, I knew I had always wanted to work for myself. My primary drivers were to build a viable business to sustain myself, and to preserve beautiful pieces from history while inspiring others to achieve a unique wardrobe.

As my business grew, however, I started to become more aware of the fashion industry as a whole. What sparked my interest was a mentor who once told me “not only are you selling cool stuff, you’re also saving the world!” I laughed it off at the time, but it really started me thinking of the larger picture of selling clothes that are otherwise destined for the landfill.

This led me down a research path of what happens to our clothing when we don’t wear it to its fullest lifespan – or even beyond that, what happens when clothing can no longer be worn. The sad reality is that more clothing is made today than can be worn by the next several generations. It is also made poorly and in unethical and often unsafe working conditions. Trends evolve faster than ever before, and styles are meant to be discarded quickly to entice us to buy more. Our excess of discarded clothing mostly ends up in the global south, where other countries are left to clean up the mess of our overconsumption.

The longer I work with vintage textiles, the more I see the value beyond their inherent beauty and the rich stories and design evolution behind them. They are also well-crafted, often using strong materials that were designed to last. I have had vintage pieces in my wardrobe that with proper care have outlasted their modern counterparts by decades.

My mission evolved from simply preserving some of the beautiful parts of our fashion design history to reducing the demand for modern-made clothing and diverting perfectly good clothing from the landfill. This is something I consider daily when I think about our future on this planet, as well as the present reality for garment workers today.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?

I studied French and fine art in college, with a side of business classes. Growing up with both parents being entrepreneurs, I always knew I wanted to do something creative and work for myself.

But I graduated in 2010, and the economy was not in place to support the creative dreams of a wide-eyed grad saddled with student loan debt. I decided to go back to community college to earn a culinary certificate in baking and pastry arts while living with my parents and working to pay down my student loans. I thought perhaps I would one day open a patisserie as my business venture, but in the meantime I would have an employable skill. I sold my entire personal vintage wardrobe that I had been collecting since high school to make the down payment for my first semester at culinary school.

After gaining experience in several bakeries I was not sold on the idea of owning my own – mad props to pastry chefs who bake all night and run their businesses all day. While shopping for some chocolates for my wedding, I was offered a job as a chocolatier at a local chocolate shop. I worked my way up from the kitchen, eventually landing in the office as the general manager. I am very grateful for my time working for another small, family-owned business as I learned a lot about the daily operation of a small business, and was strengthened by the rigorous challenges that you face daily in a smaller enterprise.

I never lost my love for vintage clothing and art history, however, and all the while was selling vintage and antique pieces online and at local markets. In 2022, I took the leap and stepped down from my management position to pursue my business full time.

Now my shop, Public Dove, has its own website and participates in markets across the country, and even supplies television shows and theater performances. I specialize in fashion from the late nineteenth through the mid-twentieth centuries. I am passionate about art history and the history of fashion design, so I especially look for pieces with Victorian Dress Reform, Arts and Crafts, Edwardian, Art Deco and Mid-century Modern design influence. I believe my offerings can be integrated into a modern wardrobe, and the quality of construction will make them last for generations.

I am proud that my business is an intersection of history, design and fashion, and a solution for the more thoughtful consumption of clothing.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

My perception of working for yourself.

Being a creative (who is also stubborn and introverted), I romanticized being my own boss. Although I grew up in a household of entrepreneurs – my mom sold her successful hair salons by the time my little sister came along and my father was a quality control engineer whose business ebbed and flowed with the fickle Detroit auto industry – it was easy to believe that there are only specific external forces in specific industries that can make running a small business challenging. There is also this public perception of small business owners being “lucky” that they “get to” do what they love all day long and just rake in the dough.

That pipe dream was quickly shattered after working for multiple small businesses and ultimately running my own. It is both a privilege to do what you love, and a daily battle just to be able to keep at it. My boss once said “it is 10% working on your passion and 90% doing other stuff”.

You have to be prepared to get down and dirty with the stuff you hate doing or are not strong at. You often don’t have the resources to outsource help, especially when you are starting up, so there is a lot of self-teaching and loathsome tasks.

The only 2 courses I ever failed in my life – accounting and Excel – are probably now my most used skills in both my day job and my business. Want to protect your intellectual property? Time to learn trademark law. Want to report your taxes accurately to the IRS? Time to learn bookkeeping and self-employment tax. Want to stay in business? Time to learn marketing, networking, sales projecting and reporting and diversifying revenue streams.

This was a hard reality to learn as a creative introvert who is bad at math. No, everyday is not this storybook picture of being surrounded by inspiring and beautiful dresses that people are just lining up to buy!

The truth is if you truly love what you do, you can ride out the challenges. But you definitely need to have an attitude that there will be constant challenges, and that sales and success are not a given (even if they are now, something will always change). You need to be on your toes and ready to pivot as those pesky external forces come at you. Or at least those dull, tedious mathy tasks.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

This may seem antithetical and maybe even controversial (?) to name in a business context, but a book that had a profound impact on me lately was “How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy” by Jenny Odell.

After studying art in college, I can relate to Jenny’s viewpoint, as she is a working artist. Coming from a background in both art and entrepreneurship, I have always felt an internal tug-of-war of values. Art and commerce are contrary.

Jenny asks all the right questions in her book that really got me thinking not only about my personal values, but how to better run my business.

The truth is, in small business you need to be prepared to hustle. It is rarely a standard workweek with average hours, and it is frequently a glut of working hours when a deadline is approaching. That said, if we don’t step away from our businesses, and leave space for rest and ideas, it can lead to more harm than good.

Small business owners have a tendency to blur the line between themselves and their work. It is after all an extension of our values and something that we work tirelessly to keep going. But not stepping away and looking at it from a dispassionate outsider’s lens can stunt growth and cause burnout.

We also live in an era of endless noise (as Jenny calls “The Attention Economy”). The sad truth is that small businesses add to that noise. After all, if you are not constantly posting on social media, you lose your rank in the algorithm. If you are not sending that marketing email and pursuing that sale, you might not have cash flow for the month.

This book has helped me not only be more conscious of how I add to the pile, but allowed me to think more deeply about what kind of value I can add to society with my business. I hope to achieve a healthy balance of providing inspiration, preserving history and encouraging a more conscious and thoughtful way of consuming clothing.

Jenny also emphasizes the importance of communities and how the contemporary sense of community has been irrevocably shaped by the internet. After experiencing the pandemic, I see now more than ever the importance of community, especially in-person. Online is a great way to reach people all over the world that you would have never otherwise had the opportunity, but it is important to maintain those human bonds not only for the survival of your business but for keeping humanity…human.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.publicdove.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/publicdove/
• Other: Join my email newsletter at: https://www.publicdove.com/pages/newsletter-sign-up. Or drop me a line at info@publicdove.com.

Image Credits
Public Dove