Designers Lisa Rose and Rachel Dian (AKA Fox & Fancy) are two cunning and creative business partners. Their vintage-feel necklaces and earrings, sourced from found objects, repurposed leather, papers, and fabrics, are handmade from prototype to packaging. Through Fox and Fancy, the duo explores their unique inspirations (think: geometry and wildernesss gardens), a true love for the local craft community, and friendship.
These ladies only stop crafting when freelance design work (Rachel) and teaching (Lisa) requires it. Sad Mag’s Craft Season correspondent Kait Fowlie nabbed the pair for a chat on a Sunday afternoon on the cusp of the holiday craft show frenzy.
Sad Mag: How did Fox & Fancy start?
Rachel: It seems like a lifetime ago. We have a mutual friend in Toronto who wanted to introduce us a few years back. He thought we’d be friends because we both always wore dresses. Oddly enough, he wasn’t wrong.
Lisa: He likes to brag about that.
Rachel: Anyway, after I moved here we started working on creative projects together, and eventually realized that we’d make a great team. We had some ideas about some jewelry we wanted to make – mostly it was stuff we wanted for ourselves.
Lisa: Rachel knew I’d always wanted to sell at craft shows, but was afraid to do it alone. We decided to go for it when we saw the call for vendors at last year’s Got Craft? show. We found out about 7 days before the deadline, so we spent an entire week putting together prototypes, a website, photographs and social media for our application. It all got done with moments to spare.
Rachel: We really didn’t think we’d get in at all. It’s so competitive.
SM: Is there one particular area you each specialize in?
Rachel: In terms of our workflow, we do most of the conceptualizing together. Pretty much everything we do is a mutual decision. We both do the crafting, but we definitely each have strengths and weaknesses.
Lisa: Rachel does all our web design, branding, and the organizational admin stuff. She’s in the process of building a new site for us, with e-store – hopefully everything will be up and running in December.
Rachel: Lisa is really good at the meticulous small detail stuff, so when I do inventory and all the web mastering, she gets tasked with all the finicky little jobs.
Lisa: The little tiny stuff. Like cutting really tiny things out of other things. If I had a superpower, that would probably be it…cutting tiny things out of other things.
Rachel: She’s got great eyesight – I have to wear these magnified prescription glasses I stole from my Dad! I’m pretty useless without them.
SM: Where do you love to shop?
Lisa: We like to do our holiday shopping at craft shows.
Rachel: Yeah, it’s hard not to spend all of the money we earn right away. The Shop Handmade movement is definitely a favourite.
Lisa: In Vancouver, we love the stretch on Main St. with all the consignment and vintage stores. One of the best things about the community is that businesses all around Commercial and Main feature the work of a lot of local crafters. I always think, oh good for them. If you can buy it from someone local instead, like if I need something for my kitchen, I’d rather go to Welks than a big store.
Rachel: Like Williams and Sonoma.
Lisa: Not that we can afford to go there. But that’s a separate issue.
SM: What are you most excited for this Christmas season?
Rachel: Shows are always a really fun time. Getting the floor plan and looking up who our neighbours are is exciting. Many other craft businesses are predominantly run by women who are doing this as a full-time or part-time endeavor. It’s a really great community to be a part of.
Lisa: This year we’re going to be at Make It! (Nov 28th – Dec 1st) and Got Craft? (Dec 14th-15th). Last year at Got Craft? I couldn’t believe how many people they got through the door in the first few hours of the day. They have really great community support. Andrea and Robert are really good at promotion and getting people to come out. They moved to an even bigger location this year, the Maritime Labour Centre.
Rachel: This will be our first time at Make It!, which has over 200 vendors and is at the PNE Forum, which is a huge location. Make It! also does silent auctions to support good causes. They give back in a tangible, interesting way.
Lisa: All together, we will be selling at shows for six days this year. This is the most we’ve done so far. Some crafters do shows almost every weekend, and we are very impressed with that.
SM: Sounds like lots of work!
Rachel: Totally! Figuring out what you need to sell and getting the right amount of product for a show is definitely a juggling act. You have to believe in your product. We might make 60 of one item, and we don’t know if it’s going to sell or not.
Lisa: There are some things we made in our first year that took so much effort and just weren’t as successful as we thought might be, and other things we didn’t expect to be popular that sold out in the first couple hours of a show. But it’s all just part of the creative process, finding out that not everything speaks to people in the same way it speaks to you.
Rachel: There’s a time and a place for everything. It’s fun coming up with the prototypes and sourcing materials – I love that. Not everything’s a winner, but it’s a fun process.
Lisa: That’s Rachel’s superpower – sourcing.
SM: What advice do you have for other crafters who are starting out?
Lisa: Just try out a lot of things. When it comes to shows, it’s a lot of work, so you really have to think things through and put the work in. You get out of it what you put in.
Rachel: And don’t underestimate the power of branding.
Lisa: And friendship. I can’t imagine having tried this alone. We’ve had a lot of friends offer to help us. We just put out a lookbook and our friends modeled for us, because they’re the most beautiful people we know. Our friend and occasional Fox & Fancy model Anna Tidland is an amazing photographer, and she loaned us her really good camera and helped out with our latest shoot.
Rachel: And our other friend Gina Loes, the singer of the Ruffled Feathers, played us song and we got to put out a cute video of her – that was a really fun afternoon.
SM: Can I touch some of your jewelry?
Rachel: Oh yeah. People always want to touch it, it’s a tactile experience. We use lots of different materials and repurposed leathers, which makes our jewelry a little bit special because you wouldn’t know what it’s made of just by looking at it. We also have a Found line that features raw brass and miscellaneous one-of-a-kind items. We’re always on the lookout for things that can be incorporated into our necklaces.
Lisa: We also use nickel and lead-free chain – and test them on allergy sensitive people.
Rachel: A.K.A. me. We also have leather cord necklaces that are really soft and comfortable (and great for men, too). We wanted to make our jewellery accessible for everyone. We’re hoping to extend to men’s stuff next year.
Lisa: Sometimes our male friends complain that we don’t have anything for them.
SM: What are some things you want to do next with Fox & Fancy?
Lisa: We both love screen-printing, and would love for that to be a bigger part of what we do. We’d love to expand our stationary line as well. That’s coming up, hopefully.
Rachel: One of the most rewarding things I noticed when I was a crafter in Toronto was seeing a stranger wearing your stuff walking down the street. I really hope we see more of that.
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