By Ashley Brady
While the cost of raw materials for fashion design has skyrocketed, this has not deterred Tah-Shawn Riley from succeeding as a fashion designer. Riley is a Christian of eight years, who describes herself as quirky, family-oriented, and, all in all, a lover of people. This hardworking young lady is a testament to the fact that, as a Christian creative, though there are struggles, once you commit your work to the LORD, you will succeed.
STITCHES GONE WRONG
For this 30-year-old CEO and founder of For Your Glory Designs (https://www.instagram.com/foryourglorydesigns/), being a fashion designer was not always her dream. Originally, she had aspired to be a chef, so in secondary school, she focused on Food and Nutrition at Mona High. Upon graduating, she completed a certificate programme in Food at Seaview Gardens HEARTinstitution, and soon after, her career began.
Her first job at a popular fast-food establishment ended abruptly after a month because the humidity in the kitchen left her with breathing challenges. Sitting around was not an option, though; she was too resilient for that, so she eagerly sought another opportunity to apply her skills as a chef. Along came job number two at another food establishment. “It was mostly bad,” Riley confessed. For the year she remained there, she encountered sexual harassment, and even though she often considered quitting, she only did so after confiding in a friend who encouraged her to walk away.
Although she enjoyed cooking, the scars from the second job were so deep that she left the industry all together. For the next two years, she worked part-time as an assistant secretary for a law firm until one day, her boss fell ill and no longer required her services.
You guessed it—she was now out of a job and in dire straits once more!
TAILORED FOR MORE
It was during this time of job-hunting that a member of her youth group at Victory Gospel Hall introduced her to the Housing, Opportunity, Production, and Employment (HOPE) programme. It was 2018. Out of curiosity, Riley attended the orientation, and from there, began classes to learn professional sewing.
HOPE students received stipend support, and when the new pupil realised that she was becoming better at this creative skill, she decided to save her money and buy material to make pieces for sale. As she balanced her personal time (sewing and selling her own designs) with being at HOPE; the budding designer began to realise that this part-time work could easily become a full-time business.
One day, while she sat in a room thinking, she heard the words, “For Your Glory Designs.” Surprised, she scanned the area to see who could have spoken, but no one was close enough to have spoken as audibly as she had heard. The words were uttered a second time, and she realised it was God telling her the name of the business. Excited, she confided in a dear friend, who encouraged her to register it.
Tah-Shawn Riley graduated as the top student for the HOPE programme that year and was rewarded for her hard work with her own sewing machine. She had finally discovered her calling.
KNITTED TO JESUS
Riley was not an overnight success, though. It took unrelenting faith in God and hard work and discipline, instilled in her by her mother, to succeed. She remembers that as a little girl, her mom would wake up very early in the mornings to start her work as a hairdresser on the veranda. She commends her mother for doing nothing less than her best and not only working hard to make ends meet, but also being disciplined enough to hold fast to priorities, like ensuring dinner was ready for her and her two younger siblings even while she was working.
While Riley had her mother and siblings around (which she enjoyed), as she grew older, she gained another family—her church family. “I was always a church girl. I just wasn’t a Christian,” she admitted. That all changed when she accepted a friend’s invitation to attend church. She visited regularly as the congregation was warm and she was continuously being encouraged by the Word of God. Repentance weighed heavily on her mind as her flesh and spirit warred for her to surrender to Christ. It was a struggle to get to church the day she decided to publicly confess Jesus as LORD. Satan fought to deter her, but Jesus shielded her, and she exited the church as a new convert of Christ.
With no regrets about her salvation decision, Riley disclosed that it is through having God in her life and being obedient to Him that she has been as successful as she is today. And it is her family at Victory Gospel Hall, who witnessed her baptism, that has supported her immensely on her journey as a fashion designer.
SOME STITCHES ARE HARD TO DO, BUT YOU’LL GET THROUGH
The most challenging thing this young lady has experienced as a designer is negative self-talk. When a design is difficult to do, even if others are excited for her, sometimes she takes a while to complete it because she doubts that she can do it. And even though she has come to discover that the difficult designs usually turn out to be her best work, she still occasionally doubts herself. However, with encouragement, it has become less of an issue.
As a woman of faith, Tah-Shawn Riley’s concluding remarks to me were: “When you get discouraged, get up. Pray. Praise. Pray. And remember always Ecclesiastes 9:10–11: ‘Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest. I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.’”
Tah-Shawn Riley can be reached at [email protected] or 876-419-0856
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Contact: [email protected]
