Close-Up With Amy Michelson

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AM:  My perfect day is probably a Sunday. I wake up and walk the dog. I swim laps outside, which makes me so incredibly happy. I just love the feeling of the water and the sun and the air. I feel transported. It's meditative and relaxing and rejuvenating. And I know that it's making my body look better. There's nothing wrong with that. That makes me happy too. I feel very in my body. I feel very connected. I feel very alive--body, mind and spirit--when I'm in the water swimming. I would do that and then come back home. I would make myself a cup of Lapsang Souchong tea, which is a smoky tea, and sit on my blue couch in the sunroom and meditate and get very still and close my eyes and just let everything become peaceful. Everything that comes out of that is perfect. It comes from the source. When I meditate and I get quiet, I tune into my inner voice, my higher power, my highest self. And when I allow that to guide me, the rest of the day just unfolds perfectly. That would be my perfect day every day if I could walk, swim, meditate at my leisure for as long as I wanted, and then start work. You know what? Actually, more and more, I'm trying to do that because that's where inspiration comes, that's where creation is born.



AM:  Hmmm. I'm a glamorous earth priestess.


AM:  Because I am a multi-dimensional being. We're all multi-dimensional. I'm very grounded. I love nature. I love natural beauty, whether it's outdoors or rustic furnishings or a very easy, not-fussy, look when someone is dressed. So there's an earthiness to me. I like being barefoot. I like wearing no makeup. I love to be with animals, that kind of very connected to the earth. I definitely have a deep spiritual practice, a deep connection to God, love, spirit, whatever you want to call it. It's the creative energy that I feel is the source of all life. I'm very connected. As I mentioned, I spend a lot of time in meditation. I feel like I allow my life to be expressed by what's coming through me from spirit. That's where the priestess part comes in. I'm also a practitioner at my church. I guess the best way to say it is I'm a spiritual therapist. I'm a licensed pray-er. I pray for people. I work in the prayer ministry, helping people with issues but not coming from a psychological perspective. Just seeing them at their best, their best spiritual qualities. Knowing the truth of their being, which is always there in spite of what they're seeing, in spite of how we all get snaggled up in oh my god, this isn't working, or my clothes look bad, or my job is not this. But the truth about it is that we're all absolutely available to all the abundance in the universe and all the wholeness and all the health. That's what I do. It's not prayer in the more traditional sense. It's actually just re-remembering what the spiritual essence of the person is. I can hold that and remind that person when they're going off the deep end. I can say no, no, that's not who you are. Who you are is divine, perfect, whole and complete and you are loved. Again, it's another part of myself that I channel love through.


AM:  I forgot the glamorous part though. Can I talk about that? That's the other word. The glamorous part, I almost feel like it's from another lifetime. And I don't even know if I believe in other lifetimes. But it comes through me in my body. I think it's kind of the way I look. It's absolutely comes through in my designs. I did not grow up in a family where my mother taught me all about pearls and cashmere. They were very natural. They were Quaker, political activists. So fashion wasn't a big part of my upbringing. But it's very much a gift. I've always felt an affinity and ease with glamour and that whole golden age of Hollywood and that look. As I said, it comes through in my designs. It comes through in the way I like to dress, in what I'm attracted to, whether it's vintage fabrics or antiques. I've got this twenties, thirties, forties thing going on. It just is. It's always what I like. It's a classic elegant glamour that I love.


AM:  I really think one is called. There is a calling to be more. I got on a more serious spiritual path and really began seeking spiritual practice maybe six or seven years ago. Again, the feeling was like a deepening of my dimension. I felt creatively expressed, professionally sound. I felt how to go deeper to give more of myself, maybe to give back more. I'm trying to think of another way to say it besides just that I was called. It's not like I went through a list of things like going to a career coach or a life coach and saying I want to design my life now. What do I want to be? It chose me, my personality. Maybe I was born that way. I've always been very sensitive, very, very intuitive, creative, and always felt like that creativity was coming from something outside of myself. So I think it was a natural road for me to want to travel on.


AM:  Oh yeah. What part do you want to know about?


AM:  Like I think for anyone who hears you have cancer, that experience catapulted me into an entirely different life. One minute I was just going about my life. I meditate, I swim, I eat vegetables, I take vitamins--the poster child of body, mind and spiritual health. It was confusing to me because I always look for a reason for a crisis like that. What is my lesson? What is there for me to know? What is my body trying to tell me? What is my life trying to tell me? To be honest, at the time, I could not figure it out. It was not clear. I just thought, okay, I'm just going to allow this experience to deepen me. It deepened me. And I think it deepened my sense of compassion for others in the understanding of what it's like to really be alone, unable to care for myself. I think that was the part of it that was a dark night in the soul. Not because I didn't think I would live. I always knew that I would live. But I think when you're relatively young and you come up against your mortality, it's really shocking and you're forced to think about things that you thought you were going to think about maybe in forty years. Maybe a lot of people suddenly become spiritual or suddenly start going to the gym, or, oh my god, I'm going to change my life. For me it wasn't like that. It was like a quieter, deeper, inner expansion of appreciation for just how beautifully fragile life is. And I think it's no accident that a year or two later in meditation the idea for Love Is the Cure came to me. I really felt like it was downloaded into my brain. I had just released the question of why me and what is my lesson in this illness. And suddenly I felt I know. Okay. I understand. I am here and I have had this experience to be the catalyst for this organization that can unite the wedding industry. I have all these relationships. I know all these people. My career is at a certain point where my life can be of service just by virtue of what I do, just by being who I am. Okay. It all came together. The ducks all lined up. It was like my work, my life, my purpose had been pre-ordained, which I'm sure it was.


AM:  Love Is the Cure is a non-profit organization that I founded. Its purpose is to raise money through the wedding industry to fund support services for women who are going through breast cancer, which is different than many of the other organizations that are funding research. This is really focused on love and care, like transportation to chemotherapy, child care while someone is going through treatment, meal delivery, spiritual support, volunteer support-the kinds of things that we need to do for each other, that we need to take care of each other. I did a lot of research when this idea came to me to see what was missing. There is a lot of money going to research, but there is not that much available for women that are going through the experience. And it is an experience. Definitely.


AM:  And sometimes alone. I think the heartbreak and the sadness of going through that alone at the time, sometimes your heart breaks open. I think my heart broke open and opened up to this huge possibility of giving love. I do think love is the cure. I do. The name is two-fold. It's about the wedding industry, because the wedding industry is built on love. But it's also really about what we need to do for each other.


AM:  I'm pretty courageous.


AM:  Well, I've faced death. I'm not afraid of that. And that's kind of the big one. I'd be lying if I didn't say I was afraid of going through that again - going through breast cancer again - or of not having a support system if something did happen to me. Again, my spiritual beliefs come in here because I really do believe that my highest good is always unfolding. When I anchor in that truth, I know whatever happens is good. If I pray for a healing for myself or someone else - and I'm using the word prayer kind of loosely - if I affirm my health even in the face of a challenge, my wholeness might mean my transition from this physical body. Everything is happening for my highest good. I can get out of stuck in my own noise and fear and anxiety about the stuff of life, but when I go back to center and know that everything is unfolding perfectly whatever it looks like, the fear loses its power. You're asking me all these philosophical questions.


AM:  To do what?


AM:  What motivates me to live?


AM:  I am very blessed to be a creator, to be plugged into high creativity. I am often downloading ideas, whether they're for non-profit organizations or dresses or paintings. I recently was asked to do a memorial service for a man and a woman who had passed away and they wanted to do a marriage of their spirits. Because I was in the wedding business and I'm a practitioner, I created this beautiful service that was a marriage of their spirits in the divine. And, for me, that was really creative. There's never been one of those before.


AM:  I'm inspired and motivated by new ideas, by new beginnings. I think I'm motivated by stretching. I'm very blessed with a knack for marketing too. I think I'm inspired by business. Business is very creative and interesting to me. I love designing, but I also love the whole thing and what it takes to grow it, and watch it grow, and watch it take its own path. I'm excited by possibility and what's available to me that I don't even know yet. That rings my bell.


AM:  No.


AM:  No. No. I feel like every mistake I learned from and I approach it that way. There really is never regret because it's led me to where I am now. And I am fortunately happy to be here.


AM:  Always. Yes.


AM:  I decided when I was in between my freshman and sophomore year in college. My parents had rented a house in the Hamptons in the summer. I had never been there before. I was studying painting at Bard College in New York State. I was always an artist, but more of a fine artist. I went there and I saw all these people with really beautiful clothes, beautiful cars, and beautiful homes. These clothes just captivated me and I learned that there really was something called fashion design. There was this whole world that was the garment business. It was really a resonance, like a click. Oh yeah. I could do that. That's it. I did then decide to go to fashion school. I transferred out of Bard College and went to Parsons School of Design in New York. Again, it was a calling. When I saw it, I knew it. That's for me. That's what I'm supposed to do.


AM:  Oh, it's been a very crooked path.


AM:  Being the ambitious, courageous creator that I am, I immediately started my own business when I was twenty-two - in New York. I had this vision. I was working for an antique clothing vendor. He would take antique clothing and redo them. He had this bathrobe made of ribbons. Again, I had one of those ah-ha downloads that I saw this sort of 1950's dress with concentric circles of ribbon and a tight bodice. I found somebody to make it for me. It was just an idea. At that moment, I saw it in Vogue magazine. I just saw the picture. And I believe that when you do have a really strong visual and you set an intention like that, somehow it rearranges the universe and it just comes into being. Well, sure enough, I got somebody to make these dresses and I was taking the subway from New York to Brooklyn to sell the dresses. I think I went to Bendel's in New York. They bought one. That was in the early eighties. Then somebody knew somebody at Martha's on Park Avenue. I took the subway up with my little dresses to see Miss Martha and Miss Lynn and their Park Avenue swans. They sat me down and brought tea on a silver tray and asked if I would put the dress on. Do you want to hear this whole story?


AM:  I remember being kind of shocked because they were just sitting there and they wanted me to put the dress on. I had these underwear on that were really ugly. They had a little compass on the front. [Laughter] I was mortified. Okay. They wanted me to get dressed. So I put on my fancy ribbon dress and modeled it for them. They loved it. They ordered three. I had them made and delivered them. I got a call from them that very same day that they had sold out in three hours. These were, at that time, very, very expensive dresses. They said they wanted to order twelve--four for Palm Beach, four for wherever, and four for Park Avenue. So then I got on the phone with Saks. I called Saks Fifth Avenue and said the dresses just sold out at Martha's in three hours. She said how soon can you be here? So I went to Saks. Saks bought them. I'm twenty-two. Saks bought them. Then Neiman Marcus bought them. Then I. Magnin bought them. Then Bergdorf bought them. Bullock's bought them. I was in Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, Women's Wear Daily, you name it. It just exploded. It sounds like your story, except I was a baby. So I have to say that's why I really feel like what I have is a gift. There have been a couple of incarnations of Amy Michelson. This is, I think, a really wonderful one, because I'm totally in my strength, in my self. I think then I was a little too young and there were a lot of things I didn't know. I have gone in and out of the fashion business and, when I'm there, my star rises and I feel like it's effortless. Not that the work is effortless. I have to work really hard. But there's something about it that's just a gift. It's a blessing. And, at a certain point, I thought, oh, this business is so stressful. I don't want to do it. I went into acting. Ha! Like that's not stressful. But I always ended up back in fashion. It always chose me. It always called me. And then I would just step in and it was golden. Before Holly Harp passed away, she wanted me to take over her business. That was a big deal, a huge leap to take over a business like that. I remember thinking, well, I could walk away or I could just accept that this is my destiny because it keeps on showing up, it keeps coming back, it keeps presenting myself. So who am I do deny my God-given gift? I'm supposed to be sharing it with the world. And I really mean that as a contribution, not as an ego-driven mission. This is, obviously, what I'm here to do. That was a very clear decision at that point. This is what I'm here to do. So I took over that business and I did that for five years. Then I started Amy Michelson. That was five years ago. There's more to that story. You just ask me what you want to hear.


AM:  There was a big detour in between the ribbon dress and Holly Harp because, as I said, I was pretty young. It exploded so quickly and I remember being so exhausted. I was cutting and shipping and doing everything and really didn't have the understanding of production or communication skills of how to have employees. I needed a stage mother. I needed a manager. I stopped doing it. I remember at the time people saying, oh my god, you are so lucky. People would kill for this opportunity. You can't walk away. I just said I can't do it, it's too much. It was too much stress. I was young and I said never again. Never, never, never, never. Ha-ha. Funny, right? So for a while I fell into doing styling and working with wardrobe and that sort of thing. I went into acting. Again, I think it was kind of a calling. I had done acting in high school and college. But I think what really called me at that point was for the beginning of my journey of selfexamination and introspection and therapy and really learning about myself from the inside. Acting is very much about knowing your feelings, your emotions. Being a creative person, it was really an amazing thing to use all of my emotions to create with. Instead of using fabric or paint, I was using my life and my experience to create new moments. I think that for acting and the inner journey, maybe that was kind of my spiritual journey or the predecessor to my spiritual journey. The acting really called me. Again, I was very blessed to have some good success with that.


AM:  I was on Falcon Crest for a year. I got to be on a nighttime soap. I did recurring roles. These were all in the late eighties. China Beach, Head of the Class. I did movies of the week. It was a while ago. I'll see if I can dig out my resume. I probably did some movies that would impress you and I can't even think of them right now. [Laughter] You can have that later. But, anyhow, the thing about my acting career that is sort of interesting was even though I'm talking about enjoying using my emotions, just like I have a niche now with my wedding gowns and I'm really good at one thing that I do, I actually had an acting teacher that said don't try to be the whole salad. Be the best carrot you can be. If you're a carrot, be a carrot. If you're a cucumber, be a cucumber. Don't try to do everything. Just be really good at one thing. That's one of the keys to being successful in business. It's really knowing what makes you distinct. And what made me distinct as an actor was my willingness to go a lot deeper into my feelings than many people. So many of the roles I did were very dramatic. I can be fun and light and funny and I did some comedy, but I did a lot of really heavy roles. To be a good actor, you really have to go there. It got pretty intense. I was playing a woman who had been committed to an insane asylum and things like that. [Laughter] I look at my reel and I see I had to cry and go to these deep dark places. And at a certain point, that was over for me. I was done with that. I was done with that and I also think being an actress wasn't fitting with who I was becoming. When people would say, oh, what do you do, what have you done, and I had to recite my resume, I just went yuck. That's not who I am. I am not my resume. I don't know. It just wasn't a fit any more. At that time, again, the universe unfolding, I had a friend who knew Holly Harp. Holly was looking for a design assistant and he introduced me. It was a really great fit, creatively. I was working with her part-time so the transition from acting back into fashion was really organic. I just naturally fell back in again because it was my right path. It was such a natural progression. That's how I got involved with working with Holly. And she was really a great mentor - in many ways.


AM:  Right. Actually, I had a design assistant in her late twenties who was engaged, looking for a wedding dress. We were looking. She didn't want something traditional. She was fashion savvy. She was a design assistant. And she wanted something different. We looked and we looked and we couldn't find anything. We ended up getting her a vintage bias-cut white velvet gown and remaking it--cutting off the sleeves and trimming the neckline. It was gorgeous. Again, it was one of those inspired moments where I completely had a full-blown vision, a download, of a wedding collection that looked like that. I just felt in my gut that, okay, this is a classic look. This is Greta Garbo, Rita Hayworth. This is a beautiful look that is certainly accepted as glamorous and elegant by our culture and timeless on film, so why is it not timeless in the setting of a wedding? At that time, when I was still at Holly Harp, I did put together a collection of bias cut wedding gowns and I went to New York. That was in '97. I took it to New York and I think a few stores bought it. Magazines went crazy over it. But most of the stores said, oh that, no, the girls won't understand that, nobody's going to wear it. It's very pretty but brides are too conservative. No, no, no, no. So it was a little ahead of its time. However, it was selling. It was selling at a few high-end stores--Bergdorf in New York and other nice stores across the country. Then when Holly Harp closed, I didn't actually inherit the business. Her son did. t was a family business and, at a certain point, they just didn't want to go any further. I was really not sure what I wanted to do with my life at that point. And some lovely friends of mine - Art and Priscilla Ewing - said go to our house in Park City, Utah. There's no one there. You can go. You can take your dogs. I was so burned-out. Everyone was saying what are you going to do? What are you going to do next? Who are you going to work for? I said, you know what, I don't really know and I don't care. I just need to go sit on a mountain and rejuvenate and lay fallow for a while and till that inner soil and regroup and allow myself to be inspired to do something instead of coming from panic like I have to do something. I wanted to allow it to reveal itself. So I did exactly that. I went and walked on the mountain and swam and meditated and was really quiet. The wedding idea kept on coming back, kept on coming back. I talked to Kyle, who is my business partner.




He and I had worked together at Holly Harp. He came out to Utah for a while and we talked about it. I think that was in July and the wedding market was in September. We had eight weeks. We just sort of thought, well, either we do it now or it's never going to happen. It just felt like a pull. There was some noise in my head that said yes, but, it didn't work last time, you've already failed once. But the other voice was stronger. Something about it was right. I so believe in listening to one's intuition and to getting clear and listening to your gut, which is why I went to sit on the mountain, because I knew I had to listen to what was right. Otherwise, whatever I did wasn't going to work. And it just kept being really clear that was the right thing to do. So Kyle and I called all the people that had worked with us for years and they came and worked for us for free. We started out at the back of my house and put together a collection in eight weeks, went to New York, and it was very different. Still, it was a new look. There was a little bit of resistance. Oh! A lot of resistance. A lot of people still saying my girls will never understand that. It's too forward. Again the magazines loved it because it was something fresh and new. But then what has happened over the past five years - thank you, God - is that the customer base has changed. And this look is so suitable for destination weddings. It's glamorous but it's soft and relaxed and sophisticated but not overdone and over-structured and poufy. So many girls are responding to that as a way they want to look. Oh, and then Carolyn Bessette Kennedy put it on the map too. She put that look on the map when she got married. So there was a sea change, a paradigm shift, whatever you want to call it. As my business has grown, so has the customer base. Where maybe five percent of girls getting married five years ago wanted that look, now it's fifty, sixty percent. I don't know, but it's big. And the trend towards destination weddings is really big. Getting married in an outdoor setting or even in a traditional setting but in a more chic, may I say, elegant, fashionable way. More girls are tuned in to what celebrities are wearing. They're tuned into the fashion magazines. And there's more of a marriage, excuse the pun, between fashion and wedding now. So a girl who's got a great sense of style doesn't suddenly become conservative because she's getting married. She wants to convey that style in what she chooses for her wedding gown. They're the kind of thing I do. It's something that is very fresh, of the moment.


AM:  Yes, absolutely. A huge shift.


AM:  They're more confident in their sense of style and I just think they're more stylish actually. I think it's happening on a bigger level too. I'm even thinking ten years ago there were things you could only get in Europe. If you were sophisticated you went to Europe and you understood Italian style or European style, but it wasn't here. But now, Pottery Barn looks great, Crate and Barrel too. The more mainstream look is much more sophisticated in lifestyle, in housewares, in fashion. At Tar-jay there are famous designers designing. There is a more mainstream understanding of high style. Lucky for me.


AM:  Oh, they're not.


AM:  First of all, bias-cut gowns require a great amount of skill. Sometimes the simplest things are the most difficult because they're not covered up with embellishments and embroideries and flowers and beads. Bias means you turn the grain of the fabric on a diagonal. So the seams can have a tendency to ripple when they're sewn together because it's almost like working with a more fluid fabric, like a jersey, especially if they're worked in sheer silk and satin and organza. They are very delicate fabrics. A gown has to be tacked first, and hung on the mannequin. The seams have to be steamed out and it's sewn again. Many people think it's easy and they'll just sew it the way you might sew a regular straight grain seam and the seams will pucker like crazy. I think one of the reasons why the Amy Michelson Collection is successful is because I really understand what it takes to get a dress. I don't cut them too tight because bias really flows over the body and hugs the curves. I cut them a little bit bigger so that they still show the curves but they don't pucker and bubble. That's not how you want to look on your wedding day.


AM:  As I said, I think that the destination wedding is one of the biggest trends we're seeing right now. And that also falls right in line with this feeling of a more relaxed elegance, that undone glamour, that little more simple silhouette as opposed to the corset and the big skirts--the ballerina caketopper style. The majority of girls are coming into the stores wanting that look, wanting a chic, simple, sophisticated, elegant, sexy look. There's a little more sexiness--but not in a vulgar way--in a sophisticated way.


AM:  The thing that's coming to my mind is when you look for a gown, when you actually go shopping, let it be a wonderful experience if it can be. Don't bring too many people with you. Bring your buddy who is your fashion guru. And if your mom is important in the decision, bring your mom. Just know that no matter what, you will know. Trust that you will absolutely know the right dress. Do your homework. Look in the magazines. Go on line. Be open to try on some things you might not have thought were what you wanted. When that dress finds you--it does find you and you find it-- it's like a marriage. You just feel it. You can see the look on your face and you can feel how you're going to feel. Just know that's your dress, it's your moment, it's your day and you are entitled to that extraordinary feeling of absolute beauty and grace.


AM:  It's along the same lines of bringing too many cooks into the kitchen-- too many opinions. Of course, this is biased, excuse the pun. I think the dress is the most important thing you spend money on. Because you can take that woman, that image, that woman in a white dress and put her in the middle of a city street and you could have a ceremony and it would look incredible. It would look very editorial. When people think they should skimp on the dress and then spend the money somewhere else, they're usually not happy. Because the bride is the star. She's the focal point. It's all about her. There's no groom's magazine. It's about the woman and her beauty and how she feels and the celebration of that. So when girls try to skimp on feeling really beautiful, I think they deserve to be beautiful and I think they should be generous to themselves about the dress. Skimp somewhere else.


AM:  No.


AM:  My perfect wedding. I guess it would be no surprise that it's going to be a very spiritual ceremony. Everyone will wear white, including the guests, whatever kind of white they want to wear, but they'll wear white. I see it in a place that has a lot of stone and is very earthy, Mediterranean, rustic. I love the juxtaposition of a gorgeous slinky glamorous dress against a beautiful flagstone and terracotta pots and things like that. I think there will be some sort of spiritual ceremony. I also have a prayer arrow that I made at a spa when I was in Mexico recently. It's a very beautiful Native American thing they do where they wrap a stick with yarn. It's like a yarn painting. You write your prayer, you write your wish, on a little piece of paper and you wrap it around a stick. Then you wrap the yarn in different colors around it and you make it into an arrow and you put feathers on the end. In my prayer arrow, I wrote a prayer for my beloved husband. I'm going to give him the prayer arrow at our wedding.


AM:  I think he's here. He's in my life. [Laughter] I want to remain positive about that. I feel very positive about it.


AM:  Yeah. Because it's new.


AM:  I am very comfortable being alone and I'm absolutely ready to be married, in partnership, in family, in love, in relatedness.


AM:  No.


AM:  You asked me how did I know that I was ready? I was saying that I think the desire made itself known. I think it was a feeling. Okay, let me put it this way. I am called to do big things in my life. I feel like I've been called to create Love Is the Cure. And that's huge. It's a national charity. I've been called to create the business of Amy Michelson. I am called to contribute to other people's lives. I give and enjoy giving. And I am at a point, it's just very clear, that I've come as far as I can come alone. It's time to be in partnership and be receiving, as well as giving. I hope that's not too esoteric because that's really it.


AM:  Hmm. What does Amy Michelson do for fun? What makes me happy is I like to turn on opera music and cook pasta and drink wine. That makes me very happy. It's a sensual pleasure, something I would like to do on a Sunday, not during the week when I'm working, but as a whole ritual. It's something I really enjoy.


AM:  The end of my perfect day. You've got it.


AM:  Physically? Or professionally?


AM:  I see myself living in two places. I'm not sure what those are. I know that there will be lap pools in both homes so that I can be happy swimming my laps every morning and staying healthy and inspired. I know that I will have a family and I don't know what that looks like. I know that one of those homes will be out of the city. I know that I will be doing my spirituality and my professional career will be more integrated. And I don't know what that looks like either. But I feel that's very exciting. Well, it already is happening. It's happening with Love Is the Cure, which is going to be huge. And Amy Michelson is going to be huge too. So it's already unfolding. I think what's unfolding with Amy Michelson is going to be very interesting. Again, I will be sailing in uncharted waters. Those are the waters I'm interested in. I'm not interested in what's already happening. I'm interested in what hasn't happened yet.


AM:  Yes, exciting. It is exciting. It's very exciting.