We can’t believe that it has been exactly one year since we launched Gal Meets Glam Collection. It’s been such a special experience for us and there’s never been a dull moment. We wouldn’t be where we are without you and we are so thankful for our readers and customers! We wake up every day focused on you and hope to make even just a tiny difference in your life. To celebrate the anniversary of our launch we put together a Q&A to share a behind the scenes look into our world with you…

Looking back at the first year of Gal Meets Glam Collection, what has been your favorite moment of this journey so far?

Julia – I don’t think I can narrow it down to a single favorite moment. For me, it’s been a compilation of moments—from designing and feeling like I am truly creating from my heart, to seeing women connect to something that means so incredibly much to me and hearing their stories about how it means so much more to them, too. Seeing our dresses on women in real life is incredibly rewarding.

Thomas – It’s not a particular moment, but I’ve really enjoyed witnessing Julia discover her true calling. Julia is involved in the design of every single garment that we produce, and at this point in our company, she wouldn’t have it any other way. While she’s not traditionally trained in design, she’s a natural.

What are some unexpected ways that launching Gal Meets Glam Collection has changed your lives?

We have repeatedly mentioned how long it took to launch GMG Collection (over four years). The months leading up to the launch were so much work. It was a mountain to climb, and when we reached the peak, we turned to each other and realized that the work was only just starting. Each time we achieve dreams, we only follow up by setting bigger ones, and this was no exception. Our lives have changed because our work has shifted greatly—we now run two separate businesses, have much larger teams which brings a whole new sense of responsibility, and divide our work between two different states, NY and SC. It’s absolutely challenging, and at times, feels unachievable and daunting, but we both love it so much and will do whatever it takes to put in the work.

What is one Gal Meets Glam Collection-related moment or accomplishment that you are especially proud of or grateful for?

We’ll never forget the feeling of launch day. We set up our TV to broadcast our analytics on both the blog and our e-commerce site. The traffic just kept climbing and climbing. Watching the numbers go up, we were frozen—we couldn’t move, we couldn’t function. We both looked at each other with tears in our eyes and said, “Here we go!!!” Luckily, our website held up and we didn’t crash. Our customers blew away our expectations, and we hit our first month’s sales goal on the first day.

What has been the toughest challenge you’ve overcome this year?

Balancing time between our two businesses and making sure we have enough personal time. We always approach everything by giving it our all. Now that we run two businesses, there are always things calling for our attention. The hardest thing is deciding what we should direct our attention to, what our team can help with, and what we need to ignore or save for later.

What has been the most unexpected lesson you’ve learned while working on Gal Meets Glam Collection this year?

The value of listening to our gut instinct. We launched GMGC based on a gut instinct that something was missing from the market. It turns out we were right. As soon as we launched, all types of stakeholders tried to tell us what to do. We even let some of those people impact us or divert us from our plans in some way. At the least, we pursued things that wasted our time, and at the worst, we took actions that were expensive to us, but not profitable. We did things that lost us money. As we have taken time to reflect on the past year, we’ve been reminded how often our gut instincts are right. After all, no one knows the Gal Meets Glam customer better than we do—we spend every day interacting with you and championing you, despite all the external pressures to do things differently.

Confession time: which three pieces from the year are your absolute favorites? (For the style or for the story behind them!)

Julia – All of our dresses are my babies, so picking just three is impossible! I can’t even pick a top three from a single month! But, here are some of my favorite stories behind three dresses…first, our Edith dress. I’ve shared more about her here. She is the first dress I dreamed up in my head before we even started working on design for the collection. When I saw our first sample of her, I burst into tears. After years of hard work, my vision was a tangible product, and that product was so beautiful. It was one of the best moments in this journey thus far. Our Judith dress…named after my mother, it is a classic shirtdress that will never go out of style. It’s a timeless dress that was inspired by my mother’s timeless beauty. My mom is a jeans and tee kind of gal, and I wanted to create a dress that embodied her effortlessness! Our Juliana dress…this was actually a dress that we designed for our May Collection last year (in a different fabric and color), but it ended up getting dropped because of numerous issues. I loved the body of this dress so much and we worked really hard to find a new fabric and color to bring her back for Resort! Little did I know, when we were shooting her in Harbour Island, I was pregnant! Our team took some photos of Thomas and I on the beach when I was wearing the Juliana dress and now she will forever hold that special reminder to me!

Thomas – My three favorites are all recent pieces. I personally think that our Resort Collection photo shoot was the best we’ve ever produced or I’ve ever shot. There was so much color, Harbour Island was the perfect backdrop, and our light was incredible throughout the whole trip. My favorite pieces were: Cecily- I love the print on this dress. Evangeline Jacket- This jacket feels like a million bucks. Every time Julia wears it, I comment, “When we started GMGC, I never thought that we’d be able to make something this high quality for the price.” Poppy – The colors of this dress are so special. I’ve seen women from size 00P to 20 wear it and they all look incredible.

What are you most excited about as you look ahead to year #2?

Continuing to make our customers happy with products that they will love and cherish having in their closets for years. Our Resort and Spring collections have been a hit—they’ve been our first collections where we’ve been able to take the feedback, data, and design know-how from the last year and apply it to the design process to make even better pieces. We are so focused on making the highest value products for our customers. We also have a big new category launching this year: coats! Additionally, we have some fun collaborations and special holiday product coming up that we can’t wait to share with all of you!