Rebecca Melsky & Eva St. Clair
Name: Rebecca Melsky
Age: 34
Location: Washington, DC
Occupation: Formerly a teacher, now full-time Princess Awesome Worker Bee
Name: Eva St. Clair
Age: 35
Location: Washington, DC
Occupation: House Elf. And co-founder of Princess Awesome.
Eva St. Clair and Rebecca Melsky have set out to recreate the idea of being ‘girly’ with their clothing line, Princess Awesome. Between the two of them, they’ve devised a way to unite what’s traditionally youthfully feminine along with what modern little girls actually like.
“Lots of little girls love dresses and rainbows and flowers and pink. And lots of those same little girls love cars and robots and pirates and dinosaurs,” they explain at Princess Awesome headquarters.
How did it begin? With shopping trips! Rebecca’s young daughter insisted on wearing dresses every day. Perusing the childrenswear sections of department stores sparked an idea in Rebecca that was further ignited by Eva’s zest for brainstorming.
“One way it could change is if fashions shift in such a way that men and boys become comfortable wearing styles that are normally associated with women and girls’ clothing. I think it’s more likely that our particular mission – to put a wide range of interesting themes on feminine clothes – will remain the same,” Eva muses.
“Eva and I talk a lot about how we are specifically not creating gender-neutral clothes. We’re taking themes and topics that do not have a gender but have been somehow deemed as “for boys” – like math and dinosaurs- and putting them on girls’ clothes. I hope that over time these topics become increasingly less gendered in public consciousness so that maybe a dress with a dinosaur on it won’t seem like such a radical idea!” Rebecca adds.
So, as a final word, what advice would Eva and Rebecca have for young ladies, other than wearing exactly what they want?
“Be kind. And don’t be a pushover,” Eva says.
“If you have a question, probably at least one other person in the room has the same question so ask it for both of you,” Rebecca adds. “And know that everyone – literally everyone – has moments of nervousness, anxiety, and fear. So there’s no reason not to be brave, confident, and generous. The world is yours.”
Great words to live by, and dress yourself up in, girls! Thank you to Rebecca and Eva for starting Princess Awesome! We at Sock It to Me think you are extraordinarily Cool Girls.
You can check out Princess Awesome at www.princess-awesome.com, and be sure to peep their brand-new line of Busy Dresses, “play-able” dresses that boast cars, planes, and trains all over ‘em! Vrooom, vroom!