Welcome! What is Leisure Society? Well, it's the company I started a few months ago. I want to design products that help people to spend more of their time at leisure. I have been designing clothing and accessories for the past 12 years in New York, for corporate companies. It was really fun and glamorous for a good many of those years, don't get me wrong. I travelled around the world, and shopped all the time, every girl's dream, right? Well, I got tired of it after a while. All I did was work. I had no hobbies, no time to take classes. In short, I felt like I had no life. And believe it or not, my job wasn't particularly creative. I was devoting all my time and energy to this thing I didn't even believe in. Worst of all, I was stressed out all the time and all I did was complain about my job. So I saved up some money and quit.
I'm not interested in climbing the corporate ladder. I don't want to have a "career" if it means that I have no life other than my job. There's so much more I want to do with my time! I work as a freelancer in the fashion industry as a way to make money. But what I really want is to do my own thing. I want to make my own job.
At first, I didn't know which way was up. I thought I wanted to go back to school to become a teacher because I wanted to do something with more meaning. But truthfully, that was only one of a million things I could do. I decided to volunteer with kids at my local library, the Leonard branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, helping them with their homework to see if I really wanted to become a teacher.
I found a book there that changed my life: How To Be Idle by Tom Hodgkinson. It validated everything I felt. I was sick of working! I was going to be a lady of leisure for as long as possible.
