Transcript: Austin Boutique: Blackmail

Austin Connoisseur
Episode “Fashion: Blackmail”

Gail Chovan: Blackmail came from my love of all things black, my love of film noir, black and white film. As a matter of fact is was almost called film noir but everyone would think it was a video store. My name is Gail Chovan and I am the owner of Blackmail, and Vivid its sister store. I have been on south congress for six years, but I started Blackmail, it would be ten years ago. Fairly soon I will be about to celebrate my tenth anniversary with Blackmail.
One day years ago I walked into a shop, actually in Washington D.C. where everything was white and I was wearing all black. And I stood there and said, somebody could do this in a really good way, have a black store like this white store and have it be beautiful and classic, and unique and without it being scary.
Blackmail was founded on the concept of being able to walk into the store and finding whatever you needed to find that was black. I don’t like to go into stores where you can find everything you need in one stop. Having lived in Europe I would go to the bakery to buy a loaf of bread, the cheese store to buy cheese, the light bulb store to buy light bulbs, and the button store to buy buttons. And so if you need black stuff you should com4e to blackmail.
To stock the store I go to markets across the country. I shop everywhere actually, New York, L.A, Los Vegas are the three big markets that I go to, both for the gift market and the clothing. Publication will interview me and say, what lines do you carry? And I say it’s not about lines to me. It’s about a designer maybe even doing two pieces that speak really well in black.
I have been in Austin maybe for 12 or 13 years. I really have embraced Austin because it has both the Liberal open minded thinking of the east coast, yet it has the Texas sentiment of anything is possible, starting my shop with 2,000 dollars in my pocket and a bunch of vintage clothing. Which is basically what I did ten years ago, was a risk. But Austin embraced it. Austin is a really great place that embraces, it embraces the independent spirit. It embraces independent business owner’s .the people of Austin love to support unique small business. I think that really important and I think that’s a major reason why I like living in Austin.
It’s a long story beginning with I guess my passion for French and all things French. I studied French literature for years and lived in France for years doing graduate degrees. And one day I was just overtaken with sewing. So I left the world of academia and just got into enrolled in design school in Paris. I became quickly ensconced in the design world there and ended up finishing school and working as a designer.
Why do I love doing what I do? That’s kind of a tough one at times because it’s a really, really difficult job. I often call different boutique owners in town and say, how do you do this? How do we make money? Its not, it’s a lot of smoke and mirrors. It looks like we lead this glamorous life of having our own business. It’s really, really a tough business.
I like being self employed, and I really enjoy having my business environment. Being in this boutique where for me its a little stage to create the kind of environment that I decide to create that particular day. People know me for fostering the individual style. Not being afraid to thin outside of the box in term’s of fashion or in terms of style. It doesn’t have to be designer with a label on it. It can be also a little more creative o r not so much formal, but maybe a little bit more creative and innovative than just a T-shirt and jeans, maybe a little avante garde at the same time.
I think that there’s a common thread with people that come into blackmail, or at least even take the time to look at our shop. And that is that there brave, they can think outside of the box. There not stuck in there little microcosm of I’ve got to go to the gap and buy my T-Shirt. They might go to the gap and buy a T-Shirt; I go to the gap and buy a T-Shirt. But there willing to maybe have the experience of coming in here and just saying, oh look this is a great little black dress that I can wear with something I have at home.
It’s not the mantra that you have to wear all black, it’s the willingness and the openness to come explore the space and say hey, that was a really cool place and I like what there doing. The importance of having a business background and opening a shop is Fundamental. I would recommend if you want to get into fashion go to school. I think it’s really important to have an educational background. I talk to a lot of people that will sit at my counter, which is kind of like a little salon that we conduct there. And they say I want to open my own shop because I love to shop.
Well I think you really need to, and I wish I had had more of a business background. Working a boutique manage people, learn how to do payroll, get all of your background in business courses. But there are opportunities to go and work for a designer in New York and hone yo0ur skills after you have a solid educational background.
If you don’t have the technique, people say I want to be a designer but I hate to sew. Well, learn to sew first. You don’t see tom ford at a sewing machine now, but he did at some point. Then branch out, you need to have a world view. You need to travel and see the world. It’s really, really important to just kind of think outside of your comfort zone. And see where people are coming from, what there wearing, what there buying in different cities. If you cant go to Europe travel around the United States.
And even to this day I love to sew, I could lock myself up in my little studio and just sew all day long, but I don’t think it would pay the bills. My name is Gail Chovan and I am a connoisseur.