10:30pm Milan, Sat­ur­day, Octo­ber 30

Whew! WHAT a day it’s been! We have been up for 30 hrs straight since leav­ing Los Ange­les. We left early Fri­day morn­ing for an almost 11 hour flight to Paris, had a six hour lay­over in Paris, flew to Milan, got the rental car, headed direct to the exhi­bi­tion cen­ter, checked in and then in to Milan to check in to our hotel. 30 hrs and I feel like a zom­bie and yet I am so exhil­i­rated right now I can hardly con­tain my excitement.

Being at the exhi­bi­tion cen­ter today was like return­ing home to a famil­iar friend. This time, no sur­prises, noth­ing new to learn, just a sense of know­ing what’s to come, how every­thing is going to work, what we need to do, how to solve prob­lems that come up and all that comes with hav­ing just a lit­tle bit of expe­ri­ence with things espe­cially when you’re over­seas can make a HUGE dif­fer­ence in how things go for you!

I mar­vel at all that has hap­pened in the past year and can only imag­ine what’s to come in the next week, espe­cially as we are pre­sent­ing for the first time, our men’s line and our new line of Kevlar jeans for men and women. There is no other excite­ment that I can describe that can com­pare to how I’m feel­ing right now. Last year, when walk­ing through the exhi­bi­tion halls, among almost 1,400 exhibitors from 31 coun­tries and see­ing the zil­lions of dol­lars that had been spent on their elab­o­rate booth dis­plays, how intim­i­dat­ing it was because we were just a tiny lit­tle booth set up like a bou­tique and now, once again, the same will hap­pen, same num­ber of exhibitors with their zil­lion dol­lar booths and us with our lit­tle bou­tique, only this time, no intim­i­da­tion, we KNOW the Euro­pean press is com­ing and we KNOW the pub­lic is anx­iously await­ing our arrival because they couldn’t believe their eyes last year when they saw what we pre­sented and I’m tick­led beyond belief tonight as I think about what we’re about to present to them because if they thought last year was some­thing, they have no idea what’s about to hit them this time!

It’s an extra­or­di­nary feel­ing to be part of what’s going on behind the scenes in all this and toKNOW what’s going to be pre­sented at this show in a cou­ple of days.  I sit here typ­ing in my Milan hotel room, more exhausted than I can remem­ber and yet, with the biggest smile on my face because I KNOW what’s about to hap­pen and there is noth­ing more sat­is­fy­ing than that. It’s the cul­mi­na­tion of so much hard work and time and effort and deter­mi­na­tion, all at a time where you have to be com­pletely out of your mind to be tak­ing so much risk in life and yet, with all that, I know with every fiber of my being that THIS is what it’s all about and that the reward for all of this work is about to be real­ized!  What a GREAT year it’s been!

Milan… get ready… WE ARE HERE and will see you in a cou­ple of days!!!

Arlene