It's working for Shelley S
New York, New York
2 children
“You want to feel like you’re getting yourself back. You can have your integrity to feel good and look good. It changes your confidence level to feel that way. Clothing can do that.”
A clothing designer finds inspiration in her postpartum life.
For Shelley Suh, her awesome family started with her awesome husband. “We met about 15 years ago. I moved from LA to New York for my husband—we fell in love.” Shelley was pursuing a career in fashion when she had her daugher, Cybelle. “You don’t really know what you’re walking into when you have a child, until you have one.” She thought she would take her time returning to work, but then an opportunity in fashion came along that she couldn’t pass up. When Cybelle was four months old, Shelley went back to work.
“I wasn’t looking for a new job and I stumbled across this opportunity. I didn’t want to go back to work but I am so passionate about my career. I went through the whole process of breastfeeding and pumping and not having good facilities to pump in: I was literally in the bathroom stall with a portable pump. You don’t really know how to change things. What do I have to do to get my milk out because I want my child to be healthy? At the same time, it totally wears on your confidence level. It makes you feel really disappointed in how things are set up.”
About four or five months after her son Mason was born, Shelley knew she wasn’t feeling normal. “I started getting the baby blues. They didn’t diagnose me with postpartum depression, but I was reaching out to all of these doctors, asking, ‘why don’t I feel normal?’ I thought, God, no one ever talks about this. It was when my dad was going through his chemo and I was feeling really hormonal. I decided I needed to put all my energy into helping women who are going through the similar things that I am going through.”
Shelley had the idea to start a clothing line for nursing mothers. “I started putting all of that weird energy into that project, so it made it really constructive. This project personally helped me get through this really hard time when I needed something positive to focus on when my father was dying.”
Loyal Hana was launched. “It’s about inspiring women through the transitions of breastfeeding and motherhood.” The line reflects Shelley’s personal style, which she describes as a relaxed fit that is a little more chic, more fashiony, and more confident. “The clothes unzip and you don’t need a cover up, it covers all those places that you’re a little bit sensitive with. Dresses for breastfeeding women are really tricky. You want to feel like you’re getting yourself back. You can have your integrity to feel good and look good. It changes your confidence level to feel that way. Clothing can do that.”
Shelley finds value and meaning in the work that she does and has already experienced the positive effects of its growth. “Whether it becomes the next huge company to succeed, or stays the size that it is, it has already succeeded for me personally,” she said. “I have already gotten letters from women saying this product has changed things for them after they had the baby: ‘I felt pretty when I put your dress on.’”