In The Beginning...

...There was a small family in New Orleans - just one of many in the days after Hurricane Katrina - looking for a new path, a new community, a new life. Looking, in fact, for what has come to be known here as "Rebirth." This family moved to the city about 6 months after the hurricane in the hopes of helping to breathe new life into a community in desperate need, which is fitting because it was a desperate move. To say that we weren't getting along very well would be an understatement. Words like "divorce" were bandied about almost casually, and we had little hope of our situation improving soon on any front. There was no trash removal. Mail delivery was inconsistent at best. The apartment building we moved into had a partially fallen-in roof, and vines climbing up the south side of the building twined their way into window spaces with no windows remaining, through cracks in the ceiling and holes in the walls and floorboards. Air conditioning? Ha ha ha ha ha! Outside the building, the rest of the city was largely and eerily silent. Felled trees still blocked many roads, and potholes that hadn't been repaired in years became pot-ponds. Our family had left Los Angeles and entered a new life in surroundings more reminiscent of a third world country than a thriving American port city.


When people asked us, "Why would you want to move there?" I was never sure how to answer them. In truth, the answer probably depended on the moment the question was asked. Sometimes I replied that we were shocked by the lack of government aid provided to the city running the nation's third largest port, and we wanted to help revitalize its economy. Sometimes I replied that my husband, who had lived here previously (I had only visited twice), always wanted to return to the Big Easy. Sometimes I just replied that Los Angeles had become too expensive, and never really sat right with us anyway. I never said "I don't," but sometimes I thought it.


Several years later, I realize that I had never known how to respond to such a question because I hadn't yet met the answer. The answer laid with the cab driver who drove us around the city when we had only one day to find and rent an apartment, and then gave us his cell phone number in case we needed anything after we moved in. It laid with the teller at the local bank who helped me to open an account, despite the fact that I had neither the correct paperwork nor much of anything to deposit. It laid with the guys who delivered our furniture (up three stories of a rotting-out winding staircase in the kind of humidity that even drowns mosquitoes) and then refused to accept a tip or delivery fee, saying instead "Thank you for coming here. You won't regret it." It laid with the restaurant owner who offered a job sight unseen. Today, when people ask me why we moved to New Orleans, the answer is easy. We moved here for a lot of reasons - some noble, some sketchy, some extremely ill considered. But we stayed for only one reason: We stayed for the people.


New Orleans is a community unlike any other in the U.S.  European architecture, Southern food and hospitality, thriving artist boroughs, live music endeavors, and warm sunshine and flowers are all wonderful perks...but the sense of neighborhood, of community, of a shared history and -what's better - a shared future; the NEED to celebrate life under even the most dire circumstances...that's what New Orleans is all about.


Four years after we moved here to New Orleans nearly as shell-shocked as the residents who lived through the storm, our city's Saints played for the title of National Champions.  Having recently settled into a new home with a kind of family stability I had never before known, I was seeking a kind of "rebirth" for my own career.  With a master's degree in social work, I had always assumed that one way or another I would be a career social worker. Unfortunately (or perhaps serendipitously) an illness prevented me from finding regular work in the city. I had fallen into the trap of sitting around and feeling sorry for myself, when - in a turn of the tables so unlikely that I should have seen it coming - New Orleans once again swept through my taciturn life, set me upright, and gave me a good swift kick in the rump. I'd been saying offhand for years that I wanted to start a jewelry company, the way most people say they're going to write the Great American Novel. Needing to make a few extra bucks, I made another impetuous, foolhardy, poorly considered decision. I emptied the checking account which I should never have been able to open in the first place to buy up an armload of black and gold beads, and I started making bracelets.


To this day I don't know how I got the gumption to walk into that first boutique with absolutely nothing to recommend me and say "Hey, want to buy some jewelry? It's black an gold!" For that I can only credit the New Orleans Saints, because I knew one thing with absolute certainty - the Saints were going to win the Superbowl. It was inevitable. I could see clearly that the same hurricane of destiny and emotion that brought my family to New Orleans and forced us to pull together come hell or (literally) high water was sweeping through the Superdome. In reality, I suppose they could have lost, and I could have been an armload's worth of black and gold beads the poorer. But the thought honestly never crossed my mind. All I could think was "How many bracelets/earrings/necklaces can I make in the next two weeks?"


So I did walk into that boutique (thank you Fleurty Girl!) and I did sell the jewelry. I like to think it was my delightful design aesthetic that moved it, but frankly it would have had to be poisonous not to sell...shops couldn't keep anything black and gold on the shelves. I left about 10 items the first day, and got a call the next day for 5 more, and 5 more the day after, and so it went.


Who do I credit with the birth of what has since become a family design business? I suppose I could take the credit myself, or credit the boutique (which certainly deserves at least a hearty thanks and the right of first refusal forever onward), or even the New Orleans Saints, because they had as much to do with my success as I did, if not more. But in reality, I think I have to credit the people of New Orleans, including my family, because I know something now that I didn't know four years ago. I know that this city would have bought up every piece of black and gold memorabilia on the shelves even if the Superbowl had gone the other way... because this is New Orleans, and we support our own.


And that's the story of the beginning of Kalla Designs.