A Day in the Life: Building ETAPE With Robin

The alarm went off at 5am. I'd already been awake twice with Robin—once at 2am, once at 4:30am. Sleep deprivation had become a familiar baseline. I packed the car with the photoshoot kit: the clothes, the props, the backdrops. And Robin.

We arrived at the location at 7am. The crew was already setting up. Robin was awake. Alert. Fed. I thought: maybe this will be easier than I imagined.

Wrong. Very wrong, 

The Reality of Bringing a Five-Month-Old to a Professional Shoot

It turns out a five-month-old doesn't understand direction. Robin didn't grasp that  the lighting was perfect so she'd need to wait for a feed, or that the nice model war going to cuddle her, not drop her off at an orphanage. She existed in her own logic—on a normal shoot time revolves around the collection, with a Robin on set, time revolved around what we could do between her needs. 

Asking for and accepting help

My mum-in-law arrived mid-morning. I'd called her the night before in a panic. Not because I couldn't handle it, but because I was smart enough to know that I couldn't handle it alone. Even then, every crew member still took turns holding her between shots—the photographer's assistant, the stylist, the producer. Robin became communal property, and that was okay. It had to be.

The day was 10 hours long. I breastfed her five times? I lost count. So every person on set say my boobs, again I'd say not usual at a fashion shoot, but the norm now for me.

What It Actually Means

I spent the drive home thinking about why I'd insisted on this. On bringing my five-month-old to a professional photoshoot. On building a maternity fashion company while existing in the thick of early motherhood.

The answer isn't clean or inspirational. It's practical.

I built ETAPE because I know what it feels like to be pregnant. To have your body change in ways you didn't anticipate. To want clothes that fit and feel like you—not soft, not apologetic, not designed to make you smaller. Clothes that let you take up space exactly as you are.

I'm building ETAPE because I'm living it right now. Not as memory, not as research, but as the lived daily reality of being a woman with a body that has changed, that continues to change.

Having Robin at that shoot wasn't a photo opportunity for my brand. It was the opposite: it was the thing that grounds this brand in something true. In the actual messy, difficult, real experience of being a mother and a founder and a woman with a body.

The Day Landed

The images from that shoot were beautiful. The pieces worked. The vision held.

But what stayed with me wasn't the photos. It was the moment around hour six when I was breastfeeding Robin in the corner while the crew reset the set, and my mother-in-law was steaming a wrinkled piece, and the photographer was checking light meters, and everyone was moving with this quiet, competent grace.

We were all doing our jobs. I was doing mine. So was my five-month-old.

Building a brand is hard. Building it while being a new mother is harder. Building it while being a new mother and believing in what you're building enough to bring your kid to the photoshoot—that's the actual work.

No compromise made.