How a Decade of Seemingly Random Projects Led to Sequin Soirée

For years, I kept trying to build things. Some of them worked, and some didn't. Some were even good ideas I just couldn't execute yet. Looking back, though, I realize they were all teaching me something about the business I actually wanted to build.

That business became Sequin Soirée.

After several years of experimenting, scrapping ideas, changing directions, building things that never really found a home, and occasionally wondering, "Why isn't any of this working?", I think I finally figured it out. But this journey started long before Sequin Soirée ever had a name.

It started when I moved to Seattle

When I moved to Seattle in 2013, I didn't know anyone. After graduating from college a year later, I started attending fashion events to meet people and learn my way around the city. Then I started blogging about my fashion activities. I still have blog posts from as far back as 2015. At the time, I wasn't thinking about building an event platform or starting a media company. I was just interested in fashion, engaging with fabulous people, and the goings-on around the city. The more events I attended, the more embedded I became in Seattle's fashion community.

From 2014 to 2016, I worked with Seattle Fashion Week as the Lead Graphic Designer. Then, from 2017 to 2019, I was the Communications Chair with The Fashion Group International - Seattle Region. Those experiences introduced me to even more designers, creatives, marketers, and people working behind the scenes to make fashion events happen. Something started to click when I realized I was more interested in the community around fashion, rather than fashion itself.

I always want to know who's showing up, who's hosting events, how people find each other, what makes events worth attending, and what happens after the event ends. I didn't realize how much those questions would eventually shape what I'm building now.

It also started with conversations

One of the earliest pieces of the puzzle was Style Chat. I've had several versions of it over the years. The first version, in the middle of COVID, was a pre-recorded video interview series where I talked with people about their careers, creative work, and experiences.

I brought the idea back in 2025 in a more casual talking-head format. And while the format changed, the underlying idea didn't: I like talking to interesting people about their unique contributions to their fashion communities and the lessons they learned, instead of pretending they had everything figured out from day one. I wasn't sure what that meant in business terms, but I wanted to keep having those conversations.

Comment below if you'd be interested in having a chat with me.

Then there were the strategy articles

I've also been writing about experiential marketing for years. I've covered everything from event marketing tactics, attendee experiences, engagement, gifting opportunities, event photography, surveys, and all of the little details that can make an event feel intentional... or like no one thought about the guest experience at all. But those articles never really had a home. While I wrote them quite consistently, they definitely stood out in my full-time marketing portfolio.

And then I made things for event people

There were also the digital products. I spent years developing tools and resources around event marketing because I noticed a pattern: a lot of people are trying to create better events, but they don't always have the tools to make the process easier.

So I made some.

Comment below if you'd like me to bring any of these back.

I was also tracking events

Post-COVID, in an attempt to get out of my homebody rut, I organized my own private event tracker to keep track of unique gatherings in case I decide to pull a look together and get some fresh air. I would scroll through event-listing platforms, social media, brand websites, newsletters, and pretty much anywhere else I could find event information. If something looked interesting, I'd save it and consider adding it to my Google Calendar.

I eventually realized that I couldn't possibly be the only person doing this. Maybe other people want to attend fashion events, find beauty professionals to collaborate with, or meet other creatives. People who want to network but don't want to spend their entire lives clicking through LinkedIn. People who just moved to a new city and want to break into a new industry. People who aren't getting invited to everything, but still want to participate. Ultimately, finding the events was often harder than actually deciding whether I wanted to go.

Potentially a problem worth solving.

Then I tried starting a consulting business

Last year, I officially launched Sequin Soirée as a consulting business. The idea was to use my marketing and experiential strategy experience to help brands and PR firms with their event marketing needs, essentially operating as a white-label marketing agency behind the scenes.

I organized a short pitch deck, reached out to PR firms and brands, and it went nowhere. But I learned I could build around the skills I'd developed over the years. I also learned that I didn't particularly want to spend my energy trying to convince brands and agencies to hire me as a behind-the-scenes resource.

Something about the model felt disconnected from what kept drawing me back to Sequin Soirée in the first place. While I was interested in helping brands promote their events, I also wanted to be closer to these experiences myself. I want to understand what is happening, help people discover similar experiences, analyze the guest experience, talk about the work behind successfully gathering like-minded people in a shared space, and create resources that are useful to people both producing and attending events.

I've even tried to talk myself into hosting events

I spent plenty of time thinking about hosting my own events: networking mixers, community gatherings, and conversations around career and creativity. But managing both the logistics of producing an event and building a cohesive marketing strategy to get people to show up felt too overwhelming. I didn't want to pressure myself to handle both sides of creating experiences when I knew it would eventually burn me out because there's a difference between loving an experience and wanting to operate the entire machine behind it.

And now, I've landed here with this version of Sequin Soirée

I want this platform to be a helpful resource for discovering fashion, beauty, lifestyle, and creative events for people who want to know what's happening, why it might be worth attending, and how they can make the most of every room. Because I've been the person looking for events, trying to figure out how to get into certain rooms, meet people without stumbling through awkward introductions and conversations, and figure out the best way to follow up with new connections.

That's the perspective I'm bringing to this project.

So, maybe none of it was actually a failure

When you're constantly pivoting, it's easy to look back at old projects and think you wasted your time, but I don't see it like that anymore.

• Moving to Seattle and getting involved in the fashion scene taught me that events could be a gateway to community

• Blogging about the events I attended taught me that I wanted to document and share those experiences

• Style Chat taught me that I wanted to engage in meaningful conversations

• The strategy articles taught me that I had something to say about experiential marketing

• The private event tracker taught me that I genuinely enjoy discovering what's happening

• The digital products taught me that I like building useful resources

• The consulting experiment taught me that I didn't want Sequin Soirée to exist solely as a service provider

• The event hosting concepts taught me what kind of role I actually want to play in building community

And all of those things eventually pointed me in the same direction. I just needed enough time (and challenging experiments) to recognize the pattern. Sometimes you can only find the right idea after building a few versions of the wrong one.

While pieces of Sequin Soirée have been the most exciting projects I've worked on over the last thirteen years, I'm still giving myself permission to let it evolve. For now, that means curating events, publishing stories and insights, sharing resources, and creating a place where people can discover opportunities they might not have found on their own.

But eventually, maybe there will be more conversations, collaborations, guides, videos, events hosted by Sequin Soirée, or something I haven't even thought of yet. I'm not going to pretend I know exactly what this will look like years from now, but I do know why I'm building it.

Your community is your responsibility. And sometimes taking responsibility for your community starts with something as simple as helping someone find the right room.

Welcome to Sequin Soirée.