Ep. 174: Colony Founder Jean Lin on Balancing Bravery and Recklessness

Jun 28

Design entrepreneur and founder of Colony, the designer’s co-op, Jean Lin, grew up in suburban Massachusetts as one of a handful of non-white kids. With two brothers, she was a card-carrying tomboy until her teenage years when she leaned into fashion as a way to express herself. Influenced by her mother’s work as an educator for the incarcerated, she initially followed a career path into social services before reconciling with her undeniable yearning to study fashion design. After getting fired a few times, launching a few businesses, and gaining a smorgasbord of experience in a handful of roles, she bet her life savings on a dream and founded Colony, a community of designers that reimagines the design gallery business model as a supportive ecosystem, while celebrating American design to an international audience.

Amy Devers: Today I’m talking to design entrepreneur Jean Lin. Jean is best known as the founder, curator and creative visionary behind Colony, the designers Co/Op. Colony is a community of independent furniture, lighting, textiles, and objects designers coming together on a New York City stage to celebrate American design with an international audience. And their roster includes designers such as Bec Brittain, Meg Callahan, Allied Maker, Flat Vernacular, Studio Paolo Ferrari, Grain, Hiroko Takeda and more. Prior to founding Colony, Jean trained as a fashion designer, earning her BFA from Parsons School of Design, and then gained professional experience in a number of roles as a designer, editor, trend forecaster, curator and educator. She has also founded the fashion brand Dressed in Yellow, as well as the charitable design organization Reclaim NYC; and Tribeca Design District. Before studying design, Jean actually started out in social services… and while her current professional work may appear very different on the surface - as you’ll hear in our talk, everything she does is underscored by a very clear and direct mission to take care of community and build healthy and nurturing ecosystems for everyone to thrive… Here’s Jean…

Jean Lin: My name is Jean Lin; I work and live in New York City and I own a gallery called Colony. We are a physical space and we also do design and consulting as well. And I do it because I love it. I love design and I love making my own way and I love putting something out into the world that’s going to last and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Amy: Well, I love that you love it. We need more love in the world. (Laughter). So let’s go all the way back to the beginning and tell me about where you grew up, what your childhood was like, what kind of a kid were you?

Jean: I grew up in Massachusetts, I was a tomboy. I’m Taiwanese American. My parents were born and raised and live in Taiwan until their adulthood. They came over when my dad came here for grad school and I was born in Arizona. My older brother was born in Taiwan. So when I was like one or two, they moved to Massachusetts and I live there, growing up, ever since then. So you know, the fact that I’m the child of immigrants, first generation American, really informed my childhood, whether I wanted it to or not.

I grew up in a very, Massachusetts suburban, very white town and area and I was one of seven non-white kids in my school and two of them are related to me. I didn’t know it at the time, but it really informed who I am today, the fact that I grew up in that place and that time, in the 80s and 90s.

I was a middle child, so I was very sort of textbook middle child. I was the only girl, so I kind of ran behind my brother a lot, my older brother and did all the sports he did. Had all the interests he had. It’s kind of like a muddy memory of what that was like. There’s like spots of clarity, of oh, that was really important, that thing my parents used to say to me was really important. But other than that, it’s like, this very generalized thing of like child of immigrants, tomboy, because I had two brothers. I didn’t grow up in design at all.

Amy: Yeah, that’s interesting. What profession were your parents engaged in?

Jean: They’re both retired now, but my dad was an engineer, a computer engineer and his shining glory of his career was he worked on text to speech, like the programing behind what Stephen Hawking’s used and that, the whole pioneering of text to speech engineering. And then my mom was an educator all her life. She taught in Taiwan. When she came here she kind of worked in corporate America because that’s kind of what she had to do.

She got her master’s in education and then for most of the time, that I can remember growing up, she left corporate America and started teaching in jails. She started at a juvenile facility near us and then she went to a men’s prison and then she ended up being at a women’s prison for a lot of my adult life. She taught there until she retired like five or six years ago.

Amy: Wow, that’s really fascinating. Did she bring stories home and were they cautionary tales or were they tales of redemption or injustice?

Jean: She’s like specifically bred to do that kind of work. She always felt more content and more at peace when she was working within the jail system than she was when she was working corporate America. So the tales that she brought home were kind of harrowing, but they were always told with this peace and like this is how the world is and this is how… these people are people and even though they did these terrible things, this is how we should treat everybody, that kind of thing.

I always think my mom is this incredibly special person because that was the kind of work that she was meant to do and I think that social work and social services is a very unique kind of person who can do that for their whole entire life.

Amy: I agree, it sounds like very compassionate and also very non-judgmental in a way that… but it also takes a real resilience of spirit to be able to go there and be immersed in all kinds of harrowing situations, right? Including those of injustice and including those of violence and…

Jean: One hundred percent.

Amy: Be able to compost in a way that makes it nutritious, ultimately.

Jean: Yeah, I mean this a little known fact about me is I actually worked in social services before I moved to New York and started studying fashion. I studied psychology for my first degree and worked in social services for a year and a half before I moved to New York. And you’re 100% right. You have to be resilient and it takes a special constitution to be able to do that for your livelihood and I knew pretty quickly that I did not have what it took to do that for the rest of my life.

So then I moved to New York. The thing is, I wanted to help people, when people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, when I was little, I would say doctor, because I thought I wanted to help people. And then I actually did pre-med for a while, along with psychology at UMASS and I’m not good at math and science (laughter) and I could not be a doctor (laughs). Pre-med lasted about three-quarters of a semester before I was like, this is not going to happen.

I was trying my hardest, my very hardest and still just bringing, like scraping home Bs. And then they were like, yeah, you’re going to need straight As to even be considered to get into medical school. And I was like, yeah, that’s not going to happen.

Amy: I always think that’s interesting. I think a lot of people who end up in the creative arts start with this need to be of service, to be a healer of some sorts. Society doesn’t really teach us that creativity is healing so much, right? It’s not like, become an artist because the world needs it. And yet we do.

Jean: Yeah and it was a real struggle for me because I studied psychology, I started this job right out of college where I was taking care of schizophrenic, a schizophrenic population out in Western Mass. It was very intimate; I was their direct care. I think the title was called Direct Care Counselor. I gave them their meds every day, I drove them to their doctors’ appointments. I would drive to New Hampshire because the cigarettes there were cheaper. Because I was in charge of their finances, they got a certain amount of money from the state, because they were on disabilities.

They got a certain amount of money every month and they had to have their cigarettes. (Laughs) So I would drive to New Hampshire to get them their cigarettes in truckfulls. Because we had several patients/clients. But yeah, I struggled because I knew that I couldn’t do that for the rest of my life and I knew I had this creative drive within me that that felt very selfish at the time, because I was taking care of these severely disabled, mentally ill people.

And the idea of going to New York City and learning how to design clothes just felt so self-indulgent. I think the conclusion I came to at the time was that I have to survive my own self before I can do any good in the world. And taking care of that… finding what you’re really supposed to be doing and making yourself the happiest version of you is actually a service because then you open yourself up to be able to find other ways to contribute to society and the greater good.

Amy: That’s incredibly self-aware to have at that age. Did you truly come to that at that age (laughs) or did you rationalize that after the fact?

Jean: I did come to that conclusion at that stage, but I don’t think it was fully realized. I think it was a selfish sort of conclusion, realistically because I needed to find a way out of that path.

Amy: I think that’s how our brain works sometimes. We organize the reason that we can feel good about in order to do the thing that our soul knows we need to do and then we have to reverse engineer what is the story I’m going to tell myself and the public about why I’m doing this.

Jean: Aand it was tough, you know, when I first came to New York I would see homeless people on the subway, on the street and I would know their story. Once you’ve worked with schizophrenic people, for even just a short amount of time, you really start to see their… you really see their effects and you can see it in the homeless population a lot here. I saw it, it was so pronounced when I first moved here because I’d just come straight from that job and I had a lot of guilt about it, for sure, a lot of guilt.

Amy: How did you process that guilt? It is a sort of thwarting of your own potential and power to not do what it is, or not find how you can express yourself most fully, or to not make yourself the happiest and most fulfilled you can possibly be. But that guilt is a real thing, to contend with. Especially if it’s something that you feel really akin to in that your mom was kind of engaged in this work and it feels like it’s in your DNA and you care deeply.

Jean: Yeah, the reality was for those of us who sort of have to work every day, and you go to college and then you get a job and then you wake up every morning and you go to work. You realize, this is your life, this is like the one life. You’ve got one pass, right, and when you’re in it and you’re just like not feeling right, it’s not that I wasn’t happy when I was working in social services. It’s just… you just know, there’s like a discomfort in your own skin when you’re doing that. And it’s your every single day life. And I think I just did realize, there’s no do overs, I can’t just pretend that this is going to be enough for me, if I just keep going down this path. I have to be true because I just knew I wasn’t going to be the kind of person who could live a total life of leisure. I knew I had to work. I knew I had to get up every day to go to somewhere to earn money. And that was enough for me, yeah, that was enough for me to sort of know that, no this isn’t right and I can’t just sacrifice my own sanity and my own happiness to try to help these people…

Amy: Force yourself, yeah, into an itchy existence every day. I mean that’s kind of how I describe it, it’s like your soul is itchy and if you’ve had a few moments, a few glimpses of a non-itchy soul and you know that there’s something, a direction that you could pursue, that might mean a non-itchy soul every day, then I can see the kind of engineer brain, from your dad, kicking in and starting to design your life, like in a more appropriate way.

You said that you went to New York to study fashion design, but can we sort of back up and figure out how you even got interested in fashion design or knew that that might be something to pursue, does it go back to your teenage years?

Jean: Yeah, I mean I think I was certainly enamored with fashion and enamored with figuring how to make a style when you’re like high school and everybody just wears Abercrombie & Fitch. You just don’t have it; you have pennies that you can roll towards something. I grew up at a time where you couldn’t just go online and find the world at your fingertips. I had to really think about how I wanted to… I really thought about how I presented myself with my outfits and things like that.

I had this sort of interest in style as like a communicator of who I was, also going back to the fact that I was like the only Asian girl, or one of four or whatever it was. Me and Ruby Wang, and I never really thought it was a path that I could go down. It was just something that I was interested in and again, when I was faced with that reality of waking up and going to work every day, I started to take it a little bit more seriously of like, maybe it could be fashion.

I also have this really strong memory of a Vogue issue, it’s kind of iconic now. There was a shoot, it was like an Alice in Wonderland shoot… all these different designers made their take… they also dressed up and it was this very fantastical editorial shoot. It was so artful. I think I was so drawn in by the idea that it was artful and fantastical, but also something that I participated in every day. That helped me. I was kind of famously known for not having a long attention span. I learned violin for like a year and sucked at it. (Laughter) I didn’t have the kind of attention span to really be about anything when I was that age. But that was one thing that was able to hold me, was this idea that fashion and style and design could be both something in your dream, but also something that you do every day.

Amy: I really love that you put it that way fashion is a way of expressing yourself to the world. But that Vogue cover gave you the bridge to thinking of it as also…the way I’m putting myself together is also the beginning of my creative agency and this is the aspirational length to which I could go with this creative agency.

Jean: Completely. I got goosebumps…

Amy: Me too! (Laughter)

Jean: I actually haven’t thought of it in that way, but absolutely, that Vogue editorial was so… it was groundbreaking for me to see because it was like this is more than just clothes or looking pretty. I think there’s this big pitfall that people have around fashion, it’s like a vain pursuit. But those kind of editorials that really tapped into a sensory experience, even just the pages of a magazine, man, those really stayed with me.

Amy: So when you finally gave yourself permission to explore fashion academically, and made the decision to go to New York to study fashion, did you have any resistance from your family? Did you have full support? Did you have this kind of excitement or fear or how did you actually line it up so that you could go to Parsons?

Jean: I had resistance from my family, but not in a way that was hindering. It was more just questions and, like making sure that it really was what I wanted to do and making sure that this is, this made sense, and that kind of thing. I will say that I want to talk about my trip abroad to Taiwan, which I took before I moved… before all of this, before I worked at the social services. Because that was sort of my eye-opening experience of… talking about my revelation of leaving social services and all that.

That was the precursor. This was the precursor to that self-awareness, was going to Taiwan and living there by myself and studying Chinese. Because it was just like, I went there by myself. I mean I had family there, but it wasn’t close family and it wasn’t in the city where I was going to be. And I just sort of went and lived as an adult, even though I was kind of still a kid. And realized how big the world was and how powerful I could be within it, by myself. And how I could actually do anything.

And that experience sort of changed my entire perspective of my life of who I was, of growing up as this fourth Chinese kid in the grade and then going to Taiwan five years later and realizing I’m one of many, but I’m still very special. And all these sort of beautiful revelations that required me to think hard, as a young person, in an existential way. Sort of gave me the agency to make choices about my life very young, that were very pointed and intentional.

So by the time I had said I’m moving to New York, I got accepted to Parsons, I’m going to study fashion, I think my family had already known this version of me that was assertive and strong and determined, to guide my life in the way that I knew I wanted it to be. So the resistance was just sort of concern and it was like a supportive resistance (laughs) I guess you can say.

Amy: I think I get what you’re getting at. It’s like just asking the right questions to make sure that you know what you’re getting into…And that you feel assured of your decision, then also needing to hear your assurance to convince them.

Jean: Yeah, and actually my dad was like, you know, Providence has a great art school (laughter). Because I think a lot of the reticence was actually just me moving to New York City by myself, never mind going to study fashion and all that kind of stuff. But I also had a really supportive… my older brother, he studied finance and he always did what he was supposed to do. And he’s an amazing older brother and an amazing son, amazing man, but I think at that point in his life, specifically, he was having a lot of challenges with the choices that he had made with his career and his happiness and his itchiness.

And I think he was really seeing in me an opportunity to find something special and knew and different, and something that wasn’t really prescribed to me since I was born. And he was really supportive. So he actually kind of made it financially possible for me to do it.

Amy: Oh, that’s so wonderful!

Jean: Yeah, and we’re not a rich clan, the Lins from norther Massachusetts, but I think I’ve been very fortunate to have them be so supportive of all the things, like my zany ideas and my zany things that I want to do that are just so foreign to what they are used to and what they know. And that’s a great example of, my dad being like, I don’t know how you’re going to do this, how are you going to…

I got a little bit of a scholarship, but they’re like, how are you going to pay for food and blah-blah. And my brother Jason was like, I got all this money, I don’t have anything to do with it, why don’t you just take some and we can make sure that you can do this. So…

Amy: Oh, that really warms my heart!

Jean: Yeah.

Amy: That gives me… that’s a really important precursor, I think, to where you’re coming from with the Colony co-op, which we’ll get to. But I really like that you told me that story. So what was Parsons for you and what was studying fashion design? Did your horizons crack open?

Jean: Parsons was the first time I was able to be only creative and not worry about what that meant. it changed the way that I moved in the world. It changed the way that I thought about creativity. It changed the way I thought about hard work. I mean it was hard, it was so hard (laughs). It was hard because of the curriculum, but it was hard because I cared so much about learning and doing and finding.

It taught me how to work hard, 100%. I didn’t really work hard before I went to Parsons. I kind of… I worked, sometimes it was hard, sometimes it was easy, but when I went to Parsons, I worked really hard and I worked really hard for like extended periods of time without rest, without sleep. And it was not because it was what was expected of me, it was because I found my way there, I borrowed money from my brother, I made that choice to be there and I felt like I owed it to myself and My brother and my family and everyone, all the people who I left at my old job who were mentally ill, I owed it to everything that led up to that, to do my very best and do everything I could to be a sponge and learn everything that there was to be learned in that moment.

Amy: There’s a difference between working hard because the job is hard or because it’s expected of you and this sort of self-driven determined, hard work because you can feel yourself propelling your own self forward. And all of the circumstances that got you there, sort of become the fuel in your motor and it sounds also like you pushed yourself in a way that totally expanded your concept, your self-concept and your creative agency.

And then now could potentially be an unbalanced way of working. But I think that we all need to go through that in our youth, particularly when we’re learning, so that we can feel what the edges are of what kind of hard work we’re capable of and just how strong we are actually.

Jean: Yeah, I mean I think that for me it was just the beginning and it was like a… it’s been a crescendo of that kind of mentality of hard work for the better part of my career from there until now. Only until recently have I had the sort of faith in what I’ve built and sort of the world around… the world directly around me to be able to let off of the gas a little bit and let myself be healthier as an individual, personally.

And trust that it’s not all going to just crumble down around me? But yeah, Parsons was the first time I worked hard. And then I think I worked hard…

Amy: Ever since…

Jean: Ever since (laughter). Even in the past two years have I been able to really say, it’s going to be okay if I just don’t go to the very edge.

Amy: Yeah, that’s an interesting precipice to get to because I think that there is this fear that it’s all going to crumble if we don’t keep working as hard as we always have. And yet there’s this opposing fear that we’re gonna crumble if we keep working as hard as we have been.

Jean: The way that I did it, it wasn’t a fear that I was going to crumble. It was kind of this certainty and me just putting it off and putting my own needs in the back seat and putting it off, trying to put it off as long as possible. But yeah, I honestly think it was the pandemic like waking up and getting out of bed and going to my computer in my kitchen, on my dining table and not having this… because I also, probably a surprise, I work out, all that stuff. So I used to have this whole big routine and I would get up so early and just work-work-work-work. And the pandemic kind of forced me to be like, oh, I can’t do that. My commute is five seconds (laughs)..

Amy: A lot of us got a real wakeup in terms of just how we were driving ourselves and our bodies and where we were spending our energy. Talk to me about your early professional life before you founded Colony, because Colony is what you’re doing now, in addition to the other things that you do. I look at this early professional life as the, I don’t know, the stepping stones that got you into position to launch yourself into this really important sole purpose that you’re doing right now.

Jean: Yeah, so I graduated from Parsons. I got offered a job immediately, design assistant, with a celebrity fashion line? So I worked for J Lo’s fashion brand and her first runway show. And I was just an assistant and I was so… now you know, I’m so heady about fashion and design and style and you know, dreams and then this J Lo, this popstar comes and is like, here’s a salary, here’s health insurance, you can be a designer. It was like so against what I thought I was about, but I was like, I need a job, so I’m going to take it? So I got that job. I had been working, interning, but also working for Proenza Schouler before that, which is more of like a design label. I could have kept going there, but they weren’t really paying me and it was like, no, I need a job, so I’m just going to take this job with this icky brand (laughs). And I worked so hard, of course I worked so hard, because that was my thing at that point. I was there until 2:00am, they asked me to dye a cashmere sweater, a white cashmere sweater red, but they only give me rit dye in the bathroom and some trash bags and stuff like that, you know?So I worked really hard and this fashion show happened, it was probably like three months/four months and after the show they let me go. And I didn’t know, I was so green, I didn’t know that that was a thing, that people just tell young designers that they can have a job and a steady income and insurance and all this stuff and they really only needed bodies…

Amy: Fully knowing it was temporary? That’s kind of predatory.

Jean: I don’t know, but that’s certainly how it felt. It was me and several other people, young designers at that time, worked there and then after the show, it was literally like a week after the show, everyone was cut loose. And I was devastated, you know? I cried in the street; I didn’t know what to do. I was like, what am I going to do now? I left this great internship, I left this great path that I really believed in, to be like a more sort of… like design designer and now my only resume piece is J Lo (laughs). That was really tough. I worked, I got another job, I got fired from that job too. So in fashion, life in fashion was about working hard and then getting let go because it was just cut throat?

Amy: And that’s the cycle of the fashion industry, right? I mean particularly at that time. I don’t know if it’s still the same…But that was my understanding of it as well. Get young bodies, use them, squeeze them up and then cut your extras, when you don’t need them anymore.

Jean: When I look back on it, you know, I realize that was when I realized I wanted to work for myself, period, full stop, because I am a hard worker and if I’m going to stay up until 2:00 in the morning, it’s going to be building something that I believe in and that I know won’t fire me in two months, you know? (Laughs) And I realized that if I was ever lucky enough to be in a position to have employees, or to be in a position to have people, manage people who are working for me, I would treat them with dignity and respect and as creatives, the creatives that they are.

When I was working, nobody asked me what my thoughts were, nobody asked what I did in my free time, which I didn’t have any, but if I had any, dreams, they were not on the table. And for me, with my company and my employees and my designers, and my students, I feel like it’s just such an important part of the way that I operate, is finding space for the creativity of the people who are supporting my dream. So that happened. That fashion happened and what happened was, I was like, I’m starting my own line.

And I was 20 nothing years old, I was not in a place where I should have been doing that, but I just felt like so motivated, so motivated to have my own company and be an entrepreneur and be my own boss. So I started my own line, it was called Dressed in Yellow, it was very sweet. I cared about it greatly. I worked very hard, but like all those things, they are very hard to start up and honestly, I probably wasn’t the best fashion designer (laughter).

So I did that for a few years, but while I was doing that, I looked for another job that I could do and earn money because I wasn’t earning any money when I was working from Dressed in Yellow. So that was when I started writing and I got a job writing for this newsletter. It covered commercial interior design and it’s called officeinsight and I think it still exists. That was how I learned about design, like the world of design.

I thought design was fashion. I thought design was like… I didn’t know there was a capital D Design out there, you know? And this job was… part of my job was to go to events, so I’d go to the openings at Moss in New York.

Amy: Oh really?

Jean: Yeah.

Amy: That’s going to be like a foundational experience.

Jean: Yeah, and I was like so young, I didn’t know anybody and I was just like this little twerp in the corner drinking my wine. But I was just so in awe of everything that was going on around me. And I really gravitated to those moments that… I mean look, commercial interiors, wonderful, right? But there are moments that are a little bit less exciting and then there are moments that are kind of transformational.

Amy: Yeah, and Moss would be one of those, the way that the curatorial agenda at Moss was one that celebrated the artistic end of Design with a capital D, but also the openings had a theatrical…Flair to them. So it would have been like the design version of your Vogue…Editorial shoot, yeah, I can see why that would be so exciting for you.

Jean: I mean Moss is on a pedestal in my mind. It was like the pinnacle and with Colony too, I always… there’s a few reference points that I look back to and I think about and I work towards with what we’re doing at Colony. And Moss, Moss is like probably number one. It’s definitely top five (laughter), but yeah, so I started writing about commercial interiors, he sent me to Milan, my boss at the time, so that was another one.

But you know, I was also interviewing the principal of Perkins+Will and stuff like that. And just really understanding that the built environment has this impact on us beyond what I really understood at the time. So that was transformative. I held onto the Dressed in Yellow thing for quite some time, but I really started to feel this kinship and kindred draw to Design with a capital D and it was things like Moss, it was things like Milan Design Week.

It was even things like companies like Steelcase and Vitra and Herman Miller and Knol, they had these amazingly rich histories, but also this very human centered way about thinking about commerce and product development and all this kind of stuff. I was really, really drawn to it and it really felt like I was learning a language that I spoke when I was a kid. It was just something like, it felt like I was coming home in a way, really finding my stride there.

Amy: I think when you do find something that clicks so resoundingly, there is a mystery too, where did this come from? Why does this feel so familiar and so comfortable for me and why do I feel like this is the area where I can really start to exert my full power.

Jean: Psychology wasn’t an accident, I was always interested in people and sociology and how people interact with each other and realizing that so much of that was influenced and c ontrolled by these other things that people actually make and people actually think of and people actually research, just felt so eye-opening to me. And then on top of that, you know, the idea that we can evoke emotion.

The first time that I went to Milan, I was just like, what the hell… what… my mind. The saying, ‘your mind is blown,’ is like an understatement for how I felt the first time I went to Milan. I cried, when I was on the bus going to the airport, I was like crying because I could not believe what I had just experienced. And it was because it was emotional. I felt it and I couldn’t… it hit me like a ton of bricks because I didn’t know that that was possible.

I didn’t know that that’s what was in store for me that week. I tried to explain it to people and you just can’t. It’s just like, you just experience it and the idea that you can just be drawn into this emotional experience through things and colors and light and walls and furniture, is like (laughs), what? I was just blown away and I feel that way about Moss too.

Amy: How old were you and what year was this, for context, or ‘ish?

Jean: Mid to early 20s, I was very young. I was in a rush. I got all my degrees in like two/three years, I was always in a rush back then. So that’s why it feels like it compacted into a short amount of time because I was so young. I was maybe 24, 23 or 24.

Amy: Obviously this is setting the stage, how did you get to founding Colony and what compelled you and what was the impetus behind that and what was the mission and what were you hoping to accomplish and all of that?

Jean: Yeah, I mean I was working and writing for this newsletter and I still had this drive to start my own business and do my own thing. And then the newsletter let me go (laughs), literally my work experience before I started my own thing was just a series of (laughs) failures and getting let go. Which is fine, you know, it’s part of the experience of getting stronger.

I started my own blog and at that time, Jamie of Design Milk fame and Clever podcast fame can tell you, at that time, when we started our blogs, it was the thing. I was like, this is it. The blog is going to be the thing. So I started a blog that was very similar to the newsletter, except it was a little bit more geared towards a younger audience because the newsletter was more geared towards the principals versus the associates.

I started a blog that was geared towards, commercial interiors, kind of, but a little bit more young, a little bit more people focused. And I thought that was going to be the thing that I was going to do for the rest of my life. It wasn’t. I ended up selling that blog to a company called Designer Pages and Designer Pages is an online product database, but they had, at the time, I think they still might have it, but they had at the time a media arm.

And Otto was rolled into the media part of Designer Pages and they hired me to run all of the media side of the company. Oh, I also worked as a trend forecaster while I was doing Otto. So other part of the story of my life is like trying to do my own thing, but also needing to make money, so finding other jobs. So while I was doing my blog I also got a job working as a trend forecaster for a company called WGSN based in London. And that was a really interesting experience because I was literally forced to see everything.

I had to go to all the trade shows, everything, and just see it and sometimes my opinion was layered on top, but usually it was more important about just seeing it all and dispersing the information in a cohesive way.

Amy: Distilling out patterns.Interesting.

Jean: So that was the job I did right before I sold the blog. And then I was working at Designer Pages. Hurricane Sandy happened, we invited designers, local New York designers to create work out of debris from the storm. And we sold it for Storm Relief. So that was like the first time I was in a curatorial role. That was the first time I put on a show. That was the first time I stepped off the screen into the 3D world of like…Physical objects, how do you install a sconce, you know. The first show was at Lignet Rose and Soho, they very generously let us take over their space for three days. And it was really magic. And from that just became friends with all these independent designers in the area, in this community.

Amy: Not only independent designers, but independent designers who would be the kind of independent designers who would also be willing to give up their time and energy and expertise to create work for a charity cause. So there is a kind of coming together of… for a group greater good at the genesis of all of this.

Jean: Yes, exactly and, it felt like… that first show felt like this is it, this is the thing, this is what I’ve been sort of searching for from the time I flipped through Vogue and all the way through, working with… like in social services. All the way through the whole thing, right.

Amy: I have goosebumps again; this does feel to me like all of Jean is coming to the party now.

Jean: Yeah, exactly, exactly (laughter). Yeah, so it was magic and I didn’t want to let that magic go. It is the first time I really intimately understood their businesses, those independent studios better and what they actually had to do. But the reality also to that was I felt whole and I didn’t want to let that go. And that’s a huge part of the story that I don’t really talk about it because it was like, I had been looking for this.

I had been looking for an outlet for my creativity that also talked about community, that also was working towards some sort of greater good. So I found it and but then it was over (laughter). A two day thing, but we did another one during Design Week the next May and that also informed the importance of space, physical space. The price of physical space. The challenges that independent designers face with showing their work and the costs and everything around that.

So the idea of Colony came about between the first Reclaim NYC show and the second and then it became more of a reality after the second one. And planning and the jumping off the deep end part happened after the second show.

Amy: Okay, so let’s give our listeners the overview of what Colony is and how it’s different from, let’s say other independent maker gallery situations.

Jean: Yeah, so Colony is structured more along the lines of a cooperative. The traditional gallery works in a commission base. So they generally take 40-60% commission on every sale. For the independent designer or maker, that is a really tough proposition because everything costs more. Materials cost more when you’re buying it locally. Their time costs more because they’re paying for shop space in New York City or in an equivalent city. And it just sort of squeezes their margin into almost nothing.

And what happens is, they end up chasing their sales. So even if one of these galleries can sell at volume and sell a lot of their work, they’re still not really making a lot of money because every sale they have to give up so much of it. So the idea behind Colony is more like a co-op. They pay a monthly fee, the designers that we represent. And then we’re able to sort of squeeze the commission down to a fraction of what it generally is.

So the idea is that they can, the designers that we represent are able to grow with their sales rather than chasing their margins. The idea is that they can, hopefully, use us as a tool to grow their business, almost like inside sales. And that’s what it is, that’s what it’s been for, for eight years.

Amy: And there’s a physical space that functions like, I would say more like a gallery than a show room because it’s very curated and it’s an evolving experience of all of the things that you’ve grown attuned to in your life and expertise. So it’s not only a place to discover independent makers, it’s a place to keep returning, to keep rediscovering, I would say maybe here’s also where your trend forecasting comes in because it does feel like a place where you can go to tap into what’s coming down the pike, what feels like very emergent, but not in a challenging way. And I mean that in the best possible way. I think…Because you work with independents and you’re also so attuned to the world of design, your curatorial representation of what you’re doing in the gallery is a really important way of sewing together different aspects of the independent maker ecosystem, in a way that presents it in its full glory. Including craftsmanship, but there’s an ambience, there’s a tactility, there’s a sensuality that comes together in Colony that really celebrates the individual maker as well as the whole movement.

Jean: Wow, thank you. (Laughter) Yeah, I mean I think that there’s like this sort of practical side of what Colony is, which is the co-op and the support that we’re offering the design community. But also there’s that magical side, the dream side which is so important and I’ve always… I’ve always made that such a priority for me, which is keeping the curatorial vision very focused and true.

And never compromising on that. And I think that’s part of the fabric of what we do and it doesn’t really always make it into the headlines because I think that co-op side is so… it’s kind of like radical to do what we’re doing on that side. But what we’re doing on the other side is all those things that I’ve talked about, like going to Milan and feeling a space and not just… and going to Moss month… every month they had it and just feeling so at the pulse. The very, very pulse of what design was and that has never left me.

That is always what I’m reaching for, every single new decision we make, every single new project we do, it’s always about that. And if we fall short, which we do, then the decision is like, does this even make it out into the world or are we even… are we even going to do this because it’s just falling short from that high-high bar of what we’re trying to accomplish.

Amy: So here’s what I think is also fascinating about the way you’ve built this. The co-op aspect of it is disruptive, or radical, but I think in a way that’s actually really harmonious because it doesn’t so much challenge the existing gallery ecosystem as much as it supports and uplifts the independent category of artist and maker to the place where they can opt in or opt out of the gallery ecosystem if they want to. But they can’t even get there if they can’t sort of be nurtured in this stage. So the co-op part is really important, but the dream part is what makes the co-op part work and you’ve built Colony so that you can protect that dream part by generating other streams or revenue so that you don’t have to chase sales in order…

Jean: Yeah.

Amy: And so there’s something I want to say very maternal about that, in that you recognize the dream part as being this fragile state of being that needs protection and needs space to grow. And needs to be constantly evolving, so can’t respond to certainty or knowns or metrics. And so in order to protect that, and the co-op part, you’ve generated sort of side businesses within Colony, including Colony consult, your consulting business and interior design so that you can support the whole thing.

And I think this is amazing. I think this is an engineers mind, I think this is an entrepreneurial… I think this is creativity infused in your entrepreneurial mindset. But I think there’s also a very powerful femininity in this way that you’ve built your business to protect the fragile parts and keep nourishing them with the resources that they need to thrive.

Jean: Yeah, I mean wow Amy, I’ve never heard anyone articulate it in that way, but it is how I feel. It is so true. I’m fiercely protective of that part of what we do and I’m also 100% convinced that it’s the reason that we’re even successful and the consultancy is… it’s also sort of like a result of that mentality of, this is really special. And if we do this right, people will want to work with us, people will want to work with us.

They will feel it and they will want to come and they will want to be able… that we will find a way, you know, and that’s what happened, that’s what has happened. And the consultancy was reactive more than anything else. It was reactive, but it was also part of the plan because I felt so strongly that if we protect that curatorial vision, if we put something out that touches people and makes them feel, then they’re going to seek us out. Then people are going to seek us out and want a piece of that, a piece of that feeling and that magic that we’re able to create. It’s weird when you have an idea and it’s such a leap of faith and a leap of everything, an investment, all the things that are scary. And then you can say, wow, that really did work out in the way that I thought… the best way that I thought it could.

Amy: Yeah, I just want our listeners to know but when you started Colony, it was a real leap. You scraped together your entire life savings to sign a five year lease on your first space and that means you are all in.

Jean: I used all of my money, that brother that helped me get to Parsons, I used some of his (laughs). I paid him back, but that support did not end at Parsons, it has continued on through my entire adult life. I always think of myself as the underdog for that, for so many different reasons. But a huge part of it is like, I just jump into these… I jump in fearlessly and I think that that… it’s either stupidity or it’s brave. I’m not sure, I’m still not sure if it’s… I’m being reckless or if I’m being brave.

I think one of those things has to exist for a normal girl like me from Massachusetts to be able to do something in New York City that has a stamp and to be able to be talking to you on this podcast. To be able to make some sort of stamp on the world for us, like normal people, mortals (laughs). We have to take huge risks and make big sacrifices and yeah, that’s kind of what I had to do. I had to say, okay, this is all the money, this is all the experience, I’m just going to go for it, because I believe it. I believe.

Amy: I love that it’s a combination of bravery and recklessness and I think you’re right, it’s both. I mean not that you weren’t taking, calculating your risks, it’s that you just had no guarantees at all.

Jean: Yeah, it’s weird to pat myself on the back for it, but it’s also just the reality of my life and what Colony is. I feel proud and I also feel like people can’t really understand what Colony is unless they really understand that part of it, you know?

Amy: I mean I think it’s such an important piece of the design ecosystem what Colony is, and not just because you’re curating and celebrating this kind of corner of the scene. But because you’re designing a new way forward and you’re a model for how people can make their own cocktail of bravery and recklessness and chart new territory in the world, whether they consider themselves a creative or not. There’s another area of your life where you made some really intentional decisions based on belief. You recently became a mother, congratulations.

Jean: Thank you!

Amy: I don’t think I’m giving anything away here; this is not an accident (laughter).

Jean: No it wasn’t.

Amy: I would love for you to tell me that story because I’ve seen pictures of your child, who is just a beautiful, laughing, gorgeous, capsule of joy (laughs).

Jean: Yeah, well, I mean, if you’ve made it this far in the podcast, you know that I work very hard, I’m very career driven, I always have been, since that moment I realized I had to wake up every day and go to work and make money. I think that that younger version of myself always assumed that I could have it all. I just assumed that it would all work out, I could have my own business and I could have the beautiful family. I could get married and all the things that you’re supposed to want when you’re just kind of starting out in adulthood.

And as I kind of progressed through my career and each step along the way, it felt like pushing a cart with no wheels up a mountain with no trail. (Laughs) It felt hard and it felt like it took all of my life energy to make these things happen. And I think I started to realize when I was younger, maybe a little older, not quite as young, but younger than I am now, that these things aren’t just going to happen for me. And I’m going to have to make sacrifices. I’m going to have to make decisions. I’m going to have to be intentional about how this one pass at life goes for me.

I always knew I wanted to have kids. I always knew I wanted children in my life story. I didn’t always know what that would look like. I didn’t know if I would find the right guy and get married. I didn’t know if I would adopt, I didn’t know what that would look like. I was very open to whatever it was, but I always knew I wanted that as part of my life, if I was so lucky to have that. But I was also, really wanted to be a business owner and I really wanted to make my own stamp professionally too. So yeah, there was just a lot of years where I chose not to get married. I’ve been so lucky to be in so many great relationships and have so many amazing people around me in my life. But for a long time it was just sort of like, my work and I need to do this because I got myself in this and I have to… I need to make this work.

And what that takes is,I always say it’s like my entire life force has to go into Colony work because I just signed over all of my money (laughs) into this mythical space that doesn’t have a floor.

Amy: And now there are these people that are also relying on it for their life force, but also you painted this incredibly accurate picture of pushing a cart with no wheels up a mountain with no trails. When you’re halfway up the mountain, you can’t go back down, you can’t go up, you have to just wait until you can get to a higher perch before you can even branch out and do anything else.

Jean: So the motherhood thing just waited. It just had to wait and wait and relationships started, relationships ended, relationships started again and I think I became very empowered in the past few years to realize that it’s not going to look the way that you read it in the fairytales when you’re little. I felt like I built a business and that was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life, and if I can do that, I can do just about anything. So I decided to have a baby.

And I didn’t wait. I mean I waited until pretty much until the last possible minute and I didn’t know if it would be possible, just physically, at my age, if I would be able to. But I just knew that if I didn’t try, I would be regretful and I knew that I had kind of subconsciously been building my life for that very moment of being able to make that decision on my own, to my own accord, under my own sort of rules and just doing it my way.

So then I did it. And I was so lucky. I feel so, so, so lucky because I have so many friends that struggled with fertility and struggled with building their own families and getting pregnant and all that stuff. I didn’t know what I was getting into, but I just felt really lucky that I was able to. I even had to brace myself that I wasn’t going to be able to and what that would look like for me. And I did come to a place where I was okay with that future as well because I had a miscarriage, all this stuff.

It’s being a woman is like the most magical thing and the hardest thing and it’s just this thing that half of us have on, as a shared experience.

Amy: That story, which includes the miracle of life and the grief of death all wrapped up into an intentional journey towards something that you believed in, but also had to be very, in a way detached from, in case it didn’t happen. It is a really, I don’t know how to put this, glorious and bittersweet and tough unfolding of creative power, I guess, in your own physical bodies ability to create life and also to, yeah, wow.

Jean: It’s like letting go of… accepting the fact that you can’t control it all, but fighting like hell to just get the best version of what you think you want in your life and doing your best to make it happen. But accepting that you don’t have full control and I mean it’s the most beautiful thing that I’ve ever done and… I’m going to cry because it’s so… it’s all the things that you hear. You roll your eyes at. Five years ago I would have rolled my eyes because I told… because I had to build the business, you know?

But I can’t believe this is my life now, it’s kind of just like, he comes to work with me, he’s in the back of Colony and sometimes it’s annoying, but most of the times it’s really amazing. And it was my choice and I have to say, I don’t want to get too political or anything, but we have the ability within us to build beautiful things, as women, lasting things, professionally, personally. But we can’t do it if we don’t have our own choice and will and if we are shackled by outside forces. And to me that’s a matter of humanity and not politics.

Amy: Agreed, 100% agreed.

Jean: And that’s how I feel. The experience of becoming a mother has made me feel it stronger and with more conviction. I still think Colony is the hardest thing I’ve ever done (laughter)…

Amy: Motherhood lasts a lifetime, right? There’s still time.

Jean: That’s true, that’s so true! But I think that I couldn’t have done any of it, Colony, do you know, any of it, if I hadn’t been empowered as a woman and I’m grateful, I’m so grateful for the path that I was able to go on because every single step gave me that much… it’s like the video games when you get more green power. It’s like every single step along the way has given me more green power to do the things that I think are important and that I want to see in my own life.

And my hope is that that can continue. And also that I can sort of empower more people and more women and more… it doesn’t have to be only women, like young people, that’s also part of what drives me now too is that I think I was so lucky to be empowered the way that I have been and I feel so… I feel an imperative need to pass that along to whoever it is behind me that needs it also.

Amy: Amen and also thank you for using your life force and all of your energy to kind of, not just build a thing, but build a platform, build a way for things to grow through you. I think that’s your way of using your life force to amplify the good that you’re able to do in the world.

Jean: Thank you Amy.

Amy: It’s really inspiring. Thank you so much for sharing your story Jean.

Jean: Of course, thank you for having me, this has been great.

Amy: Thank you for listening! To see images and learn more about Jean and her work: read the show post, click the link in the details of this episode on your podcast app, or go directly to cleverpodcast.com where you can also sign up for our newsletter. If you like Clever, we’d love your support! Please subscribe, rate, review, make a donation, tell your friends about us, or take advantage of our Sponsor offers!We also love hearing from you on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook - you can find us @cleverpodcast. You can find me, @amydevers. Clever is hosted & produced by me, Amy Devers. With editing by Rich Stroffolino, production assistance from Ilana Nevins and Anouchka Stephan and music by El Ten Eleven. Clever is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit airwavemedia.com to discover more great shows. They curate the best of them, so you don’t have to.

What is your earliest memory?

All my early memories are sepia-toned like the old pictures that inform them. It’s so hard to distinguish if they are actual memories or reconstructions based on stories that have been told to me and these pictures. I think my earliest memories can be described more as feelings: warm, excited, happy, relieved.

How do you feel about democratic design?

In theory, I love it. In practice, there is a lot to improve upon, including education on where and how design is made, and what true value is beyond the lowest possible price tag.

What’s the best advice that you’ve ever gotten?

n/a

How do you record your ideas?

They float around in my head and if the same idea keeps surfacing, I know it’s one I should act on and work towards.

What’s your current favorite tool or material to work with?

I will always have an affinity for textiles because of my time and training in fashion.

What book is on your nightstand?

I’ve been reading Three Body Problem for an embarrassingly long time, and eventually I will finish it.

Why is authenticity in design important?

Authenticity, ingenuity and creativity are what drives design. Anything else falls into other categories like commerce, entertainment, decoration, but not design.

Favorite restaurant in your city?

Impossible to choose just one. Frenchette and Loring Place for a special night out. Ho Foods, Spicy Village, Bubby’s, and Famous Szechuan for takeout.

What might we find on your desk right now?

One of my favorite items is a ceramic dumpling by Stephanie Shih, a Taiwanese-American artist who makes grocery items from the Asian American diaspora. She’s a good friend of my brother and her work is nostalgic, hilarious and beautiful at once.

Who do you look up to and why?

I would like to take this space to apologize to all my friends, family and women in general who have had babies before I had mine. My past congratulations lacked the intensity of someone who understands what a wrenchingly difficult feat pregnancy, labor and postpartum is. I look up to them for making it look easy. It is not.

What’s your favorite project that you’ve done and why?

My favorite exhibit we’ve put on to date was Pas de Deux, here at Colony. We invited our designers to collaborate with an artist to showcase art and design in context with each other. I had a crazy idea that I wanted the exhibition design to consist of the space moving and dancing along with an ambient soundtrack. My brother composed a piece we played during the show, and we adorned our entire 2000 square foot ceiling with gauze panels. Digital artists

Dmitri Cherniak and Iain Nash helped us program a series of 100 tiny fans that swelled and swayed with the music. When the music would crescendo, the sway of the ceiling would grow with it. It was magic.

What are the last five songs you listened to?

I have a hot playlist of Chinese kid songs including the absolute banger 5 Bunnies.

Where can our listeners find you on the web and on social media?

Clever is produced and hosted by Amy Devers with editing by Rich Stroffolino, production assistance from Ilana Nevins and Anouchka Stephan, and music by El Ten Eleven.