Writing you these letters has become more important to me since becoming a mum almost one year ago to the day. Mostly because I never want someone looking in from the outside to think that I’ve got it all figured out: That I’m not feeling the same lump in your throat when you turn to say goodbye to your baby, praying they know you’re coming back. Or the relentless cortisol spikes throughout the day, bouncing from one meeting to the next with one eye on the clock before the mad dash to take over from the nanny. Or the mental gymnastics when your head hits the pillow and you’re figuring out how to make the puzzle pieces of tomorrow fit.
Juggling a baby with MM this past year has felt near-impossible. When I’m with Ralph my mind is thinking about work, and when I’m at the office I’m counting down the minutes until I’m with my baby again. In the first few months of his life I tried so many things to let my two worlds co-exist; Ralph napping in an open suitcase next to me in the office. Josh waiting in the car while I attended work events so I could breastfeed as soon as it finished. Bringing Ralph to the set of a campaign when he was 10 days old (and both of us were in diapers) was, in hindsight, one of my crazier decisions. I’ve leaned on a Bob Parsons quote a lot: “The temptation to quit will be the greatest just before you are about to succeed.” Someone shared it with me when I was preparing to give birth - although there’s a dark irony in applying this to labour or motherhood, because quitting isn’t an option.
My dad’s been in business for 35 years and tries to remind me that I’ve still got time to build the Maggie Marilyn of my dreams - that it’s okay if motherhood forces my feet to touch the ground for a bit. That’s cold comfort for a girl who spent the first seven years of business feeling like she was running out of it. In those early years, success never felt stable and fast never felt fast enough. I worked myself into the ground trying to figure out what it would take to grow MM to the magnitude of the brands I loved like Patagonia or Ralph Lauren. But what I’m learning is that the answer isn’t menswear, or ‘wearable wellness’, or a uniform project for an airline. The answer is time. Anyone can build a business quickly, but to build a brand takes time. When a customer buys something from MM I want them to know that they’re investing in a brand that plans on being here fifty years from now. I want you to know that I’ve created clothes that will not only last your lifetime, but the lifetime of the brand you bought it from. The irony of business is wanting things to go fast and everything feeling slow, and the irony of motherhood is wanting things to go slow and the years slipping through your fingers like sand. Josh and I look at newborn photos of Ralph all the time, trying to figure out where the last 12 months have gone. It’s the only kind of “time” I wish would stop.
The Make Your Mark Jacket has been thirty years in the making - I can trace its origin all the way back to my childhood when we lived in a half-rounded barnhouse on the farm of dads work. Day after day I’d watch him pull on his dryzabone jacket at 5am and trek out into the rain on his XR600, returning what felt like a hundred hours later smelling of machinery oil and pine needles, face wet and red from the cold. He’d joke to us, “They should’ve built puffer jackets into these things.” Thirty years later, the contrasts you see in a MM collection - like the pairing of a ruffle blouse with a farmer’s oilskin jacket - are by design. They’re my way of acknowledging that I will forever be my parents, split down the middle. I am my mum; fixated on striped interiors and flowers and raspberry-jam-coloured cashmere. And I am my dad; out walking Ralph at 5am, cloaked in a jacket made for the elements.
MM’s version of that nostalgic farming staple, the Make Your Mark Jacket, has a quilted puffer vest inside to honour my dad, and three tiny red stripes on the outside for my mum. But my favourite detail are words by Mads hidden inside the lining: Most good things live on the other side of courage. Despite the rain and the setbacks, I watched my dad put his head down and stay the course. And when I pull my arms through the sleeves - like a time machine back to that half-rounded barn - I can smell the pine needles and summon just enough of his courage to do the same.
