We recently connected with Cory Richard Jones and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Cory, thanks for joining us today. Parents play a huge role in our development as youngsters and sometimes that impact follows us into adulthood and into our lives and careers. Looking back, what’s something you think you parents did right?
I owe my success to my mother. Not because she told me what to do, or how to do it, but because she never had her own plans for me. She never told me what college to go to or what career path to take, instead, she taught me how to fill out a student loan application when I chose a school, and she helped buy me groceries when I got into one. She was there waving in the audience when things were going well, and she was also there to pick up the pieces when they didn’t… which happened more times than I’d like to admit.
I always felt like I was one step away from making it, and if I could just hold out a little bit longer, I’d be able to make something hit.
But the truth is, this way of thinking is a luxury. I recognize that I have always had a safety net. If I failed, if I couldn’t pay my rent, If I was starving, I could always show up on my mom’s doorstep and she would hand me a bag of groceries, and allow me to keep going, just a little bit longer, so that I could try one more time to make something work. What ever it was, she was always giving me one more chance to play the game, you know, one more opportunity to hit the jackpot.
I have always been impulsive, and perhaps impatient when it comes to learning new skills. I just want to “make stuff” without taking the time to learn how to do it, and when I decided to make the jump to fashion, it was the same story. I was already cutting up fabric and laying out new designs on the floor without having taken the time to learn how to sew or even work the machines.
My Mom took it on herself to teach me how to sew, even though she was caregiving for my step dad who was suffering from Parkinson’s Disease and Dementia. She let me use her machines, and would very patiently fix them every time I damaged one by trying to cram fun fur through a machine that simply couldn’t handle it. My mom never gave up on me and never got frustrated, she would just come downstairs and fix it so I could keep sewing, then rush back upstairs to check on my step dad who couldn’t be left alone for more than a couple minutes, as he would fall, or wander, or try to open pop bottles with kitchen knives…
My mom taught me patience. I did learn to sew, and I turns out I was good at it, and I loved it, and it did ultimately become my win. But I couldn’t have truly found my calling without my mom making me feel like I was worth the journey.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
My name is Cory Richard Jones. I’m a Canadian Fashion designer and the owner/operator of the occult fashion brand, Lewis Mayhem.
Our focus is on the punk, goth, nu-goth, metal, festival/rave and pagan crowd. Lewis Mayhem is a fashion line for people who go out, people that move, dance, mosh, stay up late, and perform. Whether they are spinning fire, dancing in a pagan circle, or playing a gig, our clothing is made to be worn. Every item is designed to look good when in movement and to be noticed when standing still.
When I first started designing clothing, I started up with a small punk rock baby clothing line called Little Mayhem. I was pregnant with my first son at the time and couldn’t afford a lot of fabric (baby clothes are small), so it felt right and made sense. The Little Mayhem clothing line was short-lived, turns out babies don’t buy a lot of designer clothing, but I wasn’t done, I wanted to do more.
I started sewing and designing festival wear, gigantic fun-fur rave hoods with long bunny ears that would hang past your knees, then fun-fur chaps and tails, then leather harnesses, and plaid bondage pants. I started creating anything that I thought would be fun to make or wear. I always had this idea, that whatever I created, somehow, somewhere, someone would like it, and it would find its home. So, I was never held back by following current trends or trying to only make stuff that the majority of people would buy. I just made stuff that I liked, with the feeling that someone else would probably like it too. This ideology allowed me to be more open to explore and embrace all genres of alternative fashion, instead of limiting myself to just one thing.
I honestly believe that people should wear whatever they want, whenever they want! People shouldn’t be restricted by the norms of society or the particular “scene” that they hang out in. It’s ok to go to a metal show wearing bunny ears if you want to, or to go to a rave wearing a battle vest and fishnets. It really shouldn’t matter, as long as you feel great in the outfit you are wearing, do what you want. If fashion is a reflection of self, then wear what ever reflects the way you feel that day.
My style is influenced by the different scenes I grew up in. I spent most of my young adult life in the music scene, and because of this, I was very heavily influenced by punk, goth, and metal fashion. I played in a couple bands for about 10 years, one all-female metal/punk band and the other a grind core band, and worked as a music promoter/DJ for a metal bar at the same time. I also started working in an occult curio shoppe which focused on spell craft, pagan, punk, metal, and every type of counter culture fashion. I’ve spent so much time around really interesting people, who straight up refused to be held back by social norms, and this has definitely influenced what Lewis Mayhem is about.
When I started out, I was sewing everything at home by myself. If something caught on, I would try to sew as many as I could before getting bored and needing to move on to making something else. At this time I was selling my line through Sanctuary Curio Shoppe, this is the occult store that I mentioned above. I was fortunate to have been able to start out there, because it allowed me the opportunity to see how real customers responded to my type of fashion, in person, without taking on too much risk. I could make one item, see if people like it, and if they did, i’d go home and make as many as I could. If I sold a bunch quickly, I knew I was on to something. If I made something that took a long time to sell, well then I wouldn’t make it again. The owner of the store was great, and honestly, I owe pretty much everything I know about business to him. I worked for him for 20 years on and off. When I could no longer keep up with the sewing end of things by myself, he helped me figure out how to cut my own designs in factory. So I did it! After learning this side of mass production, I was eventually able to move my line over to a Canadian factory which made me feel good, because keeping it local was super important to me.
Because my line was now “Made in Canada”, it cost a lot more to operate. Everything was more expensive here, fabrics, shipping, sewing time, everything, which I was totally ok with. Everyone deserves to be paid fairly for their work, and quality/ethical fashion simply can cost more. I just hoped our customers would understand and fortunately they did! People understood that we weren’t big enough to get the same kind of deals that companies ordering bulk or overseas could. They understood what it meant to be locally made, and that we would never be in a position to compete price-wise with big box store fashion.
I love sewing designer gowns and leather trenchcoats, but these designs can cost me a few hundred dollars in fabric, leather and hard-wear, and 2-3 weeks in sewing time, so I obviously, would never be able to make my handmade stuff quickly or offer it at a lower price, but I really wanted to keep doing it, because my true love is still in the one-off items that I hand make at home. So for us, the solution to this problem was to offer two tiers of fashion within our brand: Designer/Runway VS Streetwear. Designer/Runway are the one only pieces that I hand sew at home. These designs are put on the runway, shot, then sold as designer items. This means, the design wont be duplicated, and the person who buys it, understands that they have something truly unique. We now had some Streetwear pieces being produced in factory, but we needed more.
In 2017, I met Nat Jones and we were married in 2018. Nat is an award winning artist comic books, video games and film. Nat has worked with a lot of amazing people, like Rob Zombie, Guillermo del Toro, Steve Niles, Todd Mcfarlane and Joe Hill. People probably know Nat best for his work on the horror/zombie comic ’68, Frank Frazetta’s Death Dealer, and Spawn, he’s worked on a LOT of other stuff including the Baldur’s Gate game series, Heavy Metal Magazine, Dark Souls, The Devil’s Rejects, 28 Days Later, Rob Zombie’s The Nail, and 30 Days of Night. The crazy thing about Nat was that when we met, we realized that he was drawing pretty much the same type of clothing I was designing. Our influences were so in synch, that we would often joke about who was “knocking each other off.” But there was no taking from each other, it was just us, our style, our vision of the world, our message that we wanted to put out there with our art. So we diid what most people would do in this situation, we paired up in every way!
When we added Nat’s artwork to the clothing brand we started with T-shirts, then we expanded into dresses, leggings, swimwear, tank tops, home decor, you name it! We now had a full streetwear line and were able to expand into new areas. At the same time, being able to offer a larger line gives me freedom and time to still sew the truly creative and often complex designer pieces that I really enjoy making.
How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?
Dreams can grow with either time or money – for me, it had to be time because I didn’t have the initial capital it would take to start a business. Lewis Mayhem needed to be my side hustle as I still had to work for someone else to pay my bills. When I started, I’d sew 10 items, sell them, take the money I made from that and reinvest in more supplies to do the next batch. Each time I reinvested, I was able to grow a bit…next time, I could sew 12 items, next time 14 items… I went on like this for a few years, until the time came to start cutting in factory. My mom loaned me enough to cut a small run. She didn’t put a deadline on payback, instead she just let me keep the full profit and flip it directly back into the company. Her gift to me was that I would now be the position to grow at a much faster rate. I still operated the same way, sold off that run, took the profit and reinvested all if it into the growth of the company, but now I was operating on a larger scale. It took me 14 years to build a business, If I’d had more starting capital, maybe I could have built it in 5. I didn’t start my business as a businesswoman, I came in as an artist trying to figure out the best way to survive on my art, businesswoman came later. I haven’t allowed myself to get hung up on the time it took me to get here, I just focused on the journey, looked up one day, and realized I was here.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
Working in, and then managing, a retail store for someone else was the best experience I could have had in preparing to run my own business. I knew first hand what it took to sell clothing, so when I opened up my own fashion brand, I knew exactly what I was getting into. I think its really important to understand what a business looks like on the floor, instead of from the office with a book of numbers in front of you. But because I worked for someone else, I was taught a certain way of doing things. Once I started my own company, I had to unlearn certain policies that didn’t fit with my personal values. For example, I was taught to never accept exchanges or offer refunds in the store. When I started making my own clothes, and sold a designer piece to someone who wanted to return it the next day because it didn’t fit, I felt very different about this policy. The idea of someone being stuck with one of my designs that they couldn’t really love bothered me. I had spent hours creating this piece, and for someone to not be able to wear it, well that was horrible for both the customer and myself. It is important to me that people feel good in our clothing.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.lewismayhem.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lewismayhem/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LewisMayhem
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lewismayhem/
- Other: TIKTOK: https://www.tiktok.com/@lewismayhem
Image Credits
Photography by: Renee Robyn Photography Models: Petal, Renee, Ash, Suvo, Chapin, Khel, Persephone