In this episode of Excuse My Grandma, Kim and Grandma Gail get comfortable. Always interested in fashion and vintage style, Kim and Grandma Gail break down how women’s clothing has changed over the decades. From corsets to oversized hoodies, the times have changed. But Grandma still lounges in her slacks. For an expert take on comfortable fashion, Excuse My Grandma welcomes Sarah Fiszel –owner of Brave Pudding, a cashmere footwear brand. (Shop Kim and Grandma’s favorite pieces here!) Sarah explains how comfort has evolved, especially due to the pandemic. She wanted to create a shoe that’s practical for busy and stylish people. Sarah and Grandma Gail bond over starting a business after raising a family; Grandma wants every woman to know they can do something and be good at something at any age! In The Grandma Report, they discuss the pros and cons of using AI in fashion. Their takes are shocking! Can you guess who is team tech and who is more traditional? Read about how H&M is implementing AI in place of human models here! Kim, Grandma, and Sarah then play a game of Should We Bring It Back: 1950s Fashion Edition. Do you agree that matching sets are here to stay? Do you want peplum to make a comeback? In the Ask Grandma Anything segment, Kim and Gail answer your questions! For the best restaurants in Florida, Grandma is your guide. For how to build close friendships, Kim shares her words of wisdom.To finish the episode, Grandma answers the guest’s question regarding working in your 80s –which she’s LOVING. Follow us onInstagram @excusemygrandma TikTok @excusemygrandma Watch on YouTubeSpotifyMusic By: Guy Kelly00:00: Intro26:39: The Grandma Report 31:00 Should We Bring It Back?35:15 AGA
Chapter 1: Who are the hosts and what is the episode about?
Welcome back to another episode of Excuse My Grandma. It's Kim and my co-host, Grandma Gail. So grandma, this morning we filmed so many outfit videos for social media. You've been, that's the best part about when I'm here in Florida because you get to help me pick out my outfits. I get to go into your closet and steal some stuff, which is always fun.
I know it's not, it's running out of stuff though, Kim. I'm going to have to bring some more things into the closet.
We discover some old things that you forgot about sometimes. And yeah, I'm always ordering new stuff that you're like helping me decide whether to pick or to return.
Most of them are really not pickable.
Chapter 2: How has women's fashion evolved over the decades?
Yeah, I'm not the best at ordering, but I feel like a lot of the time, obviously I'm wearing things that I would wear in my daily life, which is all pretty like comfortable. Correct. I mean, even if it's like a corseted dress or something, I was thinking about all like the past of fashion and thinking we could kind of go through the generations and talk about how fashion has changed so much from,
being really uncomfortable to more comfortable today. But even today, I lounge in leggings or sweatpants most days, unless I have to see people. But if you're lounging, you're wearing slacks.
Yeah, I usually wear a pair of nice pants. I don't like to wear loungewear.
Such a generational difference.
Well, it's also I look dumpy in them. So if somebody sees me in sweatpants, I look like a little short balloon, like the Oopa Blueberry Lady. Oopa Loopa. Oopa Hoopa. So I tend to wear them. And, you know, I have a lot of different like little pants that are tailored. They look fine. Yeah. But how is that cozy? To me, they're cozy.
Yeah, I guess maybe you're used to being even more uncomfortable.
I mean, if I get very, very casual, I'll put a T-shirt on.
Yeah, that's the most casual.
That's really casual.
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Chapter 3: Who is Sarah Fiszel and what inspired her to start Brave Pudding?
Yeah, they wear slacks and probably a jacket or a white man tailored shirt.
Yeah.
Still have to be appropriately dressed. Mm-hmm.
Um, so that's sort of the history of it all, but I was thinking we could bring in an expert today, Sarah Fazell, who, um, is a founder of a company that's all about ease in fashion. So let's bring her into chat. Okay. Okay, grandma and I have been talking about comfort in fashion and how that's changed over the years. So we thought the perfect guest to talk to today would be Sarah Fazell.
She's the founder of Brave Pudding. She's a mom. She is one of those amazing female entrepreneurs that started a business that is doing amazing. So we can't wait. And different. Yeah, different.
We're looking for different.
Yeah. So Sarah, thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here. Us too. So we want to hear all about the journey of starting Brave Pudding, and then we have lots of questions.
Great. Great. Well, my journey to starting Brave Pudding wasn't... I didn't set out to start a business, which I think you have to really be open to because things develop at the right time when you're ready. And I'd always had drawers full of beautiful socks, and I never wanted to wear them. And because the minute you wear a sock, they either get...
worn in the heel or roughed up in the back or a ball.
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Chapter 4: What makes Brave Pudding's cashmere footwear unique?
And so how do you redefine that? People wanted to be out of their sweatpants, they wanted to be out of their yoga clothes, but sort of how does that translate in the modern world post the pandemic? And people spent more than ever in interior design. because they were staying home more.
And I felt like I wanted to take the comfort that I feel inside with all my cozy blankets and pajamas and loungewear and cozies. I wanted to bring that outside. I didn't want to take them off to leave. And so it was the perfect hybrid. I just started playing around with glue. The cobblers in New York City are amazing. It's sort of a
lost trade that doesn't exist in a lot of other cities anymore and they gave me advice and they're the nicest guys and they said no you have to do it this way no back we won't hold right because what was the knowledge you had prior to that and making zero right i was not a cobbler on the accident i thought you were a cobbler your whole life
i did go to cornell textile and design school okay so you had some of that i did and i worked at ralph lauren in the corporate offices when i was in high school and i would go every day after school in my uniform from nightingale so you had retail in your blood you were really interesting the interest was always there yes um i remember my first job was at nine years old was selling men shirts in east hampton at this old springer store and i learned about
the quality and how you sell something and how it feels and touches. And so I think that was really influential. And then I just started messing around and wearing them. And I was private on Instagram and people started DMing me to place orders and fast forward making them in my bathroom. They were drying on my dining room table.
My little son was helping me bag them up in half baguette bags to be delivered with Japanese washi tape. Yeah, it was such a wonderful experience, and I think it was amazing to have the kids in the house.
But do they come in sizes?
Is it small, medium, or large? Yeah, so fast forward, we decided to make it into a real product. After selling almost 100, you know, we were like, let's see if this can be a real business.
And I wanted it to feel exactly as though you were wearing the most beautiful, pristine cashmere sock that never got dirty, never wore out, never had all the problems with socks, but also somehow translated to wear them outside. And they come in whole sizes. There's a full internal construction. So it's deceptive. It looks like you're just wearing a sock.
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Chapter 5: How did Sarah develop her product and start her business?
Do you really?
I wore them black tie, even I went to a 50th birthday shop. And I wore the black ones. And my partner in business and in life, Max Fetterbusch, he wore the black ones with his tux. And men have been wearing Venetian slippers, Belgian slippers with tuxes forever. Well, men much more so than women. And I said, this is like amazing. Like, oh, you're wearing slippers?
I'm wearing socks on, even more comfortable than a black tie. So I kind of like to do a tongue-in-cheek like that because what woman goes to a black tie? After the cocktail hour, my feet are killing a thing. I'm not comfortable. I don't feel like dancing. And then I think that's what it is. I think women have been uncomfortable.
And then men or whoever they're with wonder like, oh, why is she, you know, diva? Or why is she saying her toes hurt? Why does she need Advil? And it's like, no, we're just as fun as everyone else. But like, if you're uncomfortable, you're not going to have fun.
It's actually such a good point. Like the judgment of you can't walk down the block to get a cab. Like, why does the Uber have to come around or things like this? And it's not easy to walk in heels after you've been in them all. It's not good for your back. And it's not like this is true. These are true. Yeah, I like it.
I like the idea there. You could get them in any color. So the black really is fabulous because it blends into the pants.
Yeah, exactly. If you're in the city and you wear a black miniskirt with black tights, cotton
cashmere or whatever tights and then you put the black on it's just the most seamless look right and so i think that's why we've done through our advertising and our marketing that we've done in the photo shoots is was really to explain to the client like how they're going to wear when they're going to wear it that's very good yeah because it's a new item it's a new item it has to be explained it has to be explained and visually because i don't think people read
long, you know. Well, they don't, they can't get it. This one picture is worth a thousand words.
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Chapter 6: What challenges and successes has Sarah experienced in her entrepreneurial journey?
And then I sort of got comfortable with the fact that I'm not really teaching my kids anything. And I say, great, everything's great. And so seeing like, no, we didn't have a good day today or
no the sample came very important it's not because every day is in christmas but and also saying like the success isn't necessarily like dollars and it's a lot of other well that becomes part of it because that that is a gratification that you know that you're economically
now self-sufficient in doing something that you love to do this is the difference between us though you're like once excuse me grandma was a business you were like we're doing it and like the whole time i was just like i'll do it for free like i have yeah but i don't yeah it's not in my no i got it i got it so i mean it's fine if you're doing public service then you know and i think you should do that but if you're really putting effort into it and you're putting your time and effort
It makes you feel good for yourself. You don't have to become Elon Musk. I mean, we don't need to adapt trillions of dollars of profit, but you want to know after all the time that you've put in that it is successful financially. Otherwise you really can't keep doing. I mean, nobody has a bottomless pit where you just can keep doing that.
And I think it's important for the team too. We've got a really good team and we spent the time over developing the product to build a team. So I think unfortunately, like monetary success,
is still a success because we have a whole team and they see the numbers and they want to know if we're doing well and when we have a great day i mean we're on the wall street journal on thursday we have so many orders and that pumps them up and i said to them you know post it on your instagrams like this is your victory as much as it's mine like you've worked all this it's great that it's my name and i'm the founder and great putting and i i really love all that but like these are amazing hard-working people into it and it's their job so they want to know it's like right like so if i continue
a business that's not bringing in revenue, I would feel uncomfortable.
For sure.
For sure. Not to be pushing and pushing and pushing.
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Chapter 7: How do Kim and Grandma Gail relate to Sarah's story about career and creativity?
Like my boyfriend and I are separately therapy people. Like we always have been in therapy. So like that's better than nothing. Yes. I could see how it would be useful to do together. But I think also it is very like, I probably haven't, thank God, been like, burned enough or feel like I need to. Not that you have to be. It's different.
I think you have other issues when you're when you're have another when you had children and when you have other.
Like there's so much.
There's so much to take on as a second part. So in that case, I agree with Sarah. You really do need to talk it out with somebody professional. But I think as a first time around, you should, if you're having so many problems right away, you should just almost move on.
But it's not always like you're in a problem. Yeah. It's not that you have problems.
It's like, why? It could be like, why do you always get quiet when I ask questions? how I look, I don't know, making something up, right? And like you could fight about it for the next 15 years or you could like kind of talk it out and be like, what is it? When I say, do I look? And he would be like, oh, like my mother used to always say, whatever.
It always gets back to the mother. It doesn't matter what conversation, it's always the mother.
But yeah, I feel like it could be so fun and your business could even be better when you are in it with a romantic partner or family member if you are aligned in that way. And luckily in your case, you were. So that's great. Okay, let's talk about our grandma report. This week, our article, it's in Business of Fashion and it's just talking about H&M using AI models.
So since we have Sarah here, the expert.
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Chapter 8: What are Sarah's views on business partnership and work-life balance?
Meaning that it doesn't look lifelike yet? Like, what do you mean it's not almost there?
It looks lifelike. I think the model looks lifelike. It's hard to have the product look lifelike and perform. But they'll fix it. I think they will.
They'll fix it. I think it's all amazing. I mean, I'm obsessed with, like, talk GPT and stuff. I'm also interested in AI. My only thing is when it comes to, like, those creative industries. Like, I know in film and TV, it's a huge discussion now, too, of, like,
using ai and taking away it doesn't matter they're going to have to learn different jobs we've discussed this this is the way the future is you can't pull back it's only going to go forward there's going to be a disrupting moment in our time and we will get over it. I mean, your brother's been talking about this for years. I mean, he was a proponent as a kid at 18 years old of AI. So he's right.
And we didn't understand it. If I did, I would have put a lot of this talk he talked about. But the truth of the matter is that's the future. Can never look back. We can really never go backwards. Everything is forward. Just like these are forward looking shoes, forward different ideas. We can't go back to wearing platforms. Women are not going to do it.
I mean, maybe it'll be for one fashion shoot. Maybe somebody in Paris will wear it. But most people want to go and be comfortable or be part of the new generation, new thinking. Everything is new, including us. I mean, I want to think new. I want to think old stuff. I feel the same exact way as you do. I think it's very important. And I don't think people should worry about the jobs will come.
We're going to have different types of education. We're not going to learn the same way. Because it's not going to be necessary. You're going to have to look on your phone. You can find out all the information without memorizing what dates in history were important. It's, you know, that's already changed. So I don't think we should worry about it. I think people should look.
Hopefully there'll be new things to be excited about.
Yeah. Speaking of old fashioned trends, let's play a game of should we bring it back? We play it on every episode with like 1950s fashion trends. And then we'll decide whether we want to bring it back to today or leave it in the past. Okay, a corset waist.
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