Thread by @SFGate

Sydney Hawes didn't expect to see the coat she'd hand-sewn in her Oakland studio on national tv.

The design director for the all-woman childrenswear brand iloveplum, Hawes joked she got up, “like, at the middle of the night” to watch the inauguration.
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With a sliver of hope, she saw Biden make his way out of the church.

Then, she saw a little faux fur-clad arm linked with VP Kamala Harris. And she screamed.

"I must have woken up all the East Bay," she laughed. The coat almost didn't happen.
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Faux fur was one of the first things that they ruled out, worried that it would be too fussy.

Then, Hawes saw the famous photo of Kamala Harris as a little girl, wearing a leopard coat. As soon as she saw it, she said, "everything else fell away."
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To her, making a replica of the coat Harris wore as a girl evoked progress, the legacy that the vice president's great-nieces and other young children will carry on. It brought Kamala Harris' story full circle.

They put together a pitch. Meena Harris loved it.

And then the accolades and media attention came.

The coats were covered by Harper's Bazaar, by People, by Teen Vogue. It blew up on Meena Harris' Instagram feed. A video of Kamala Harris at the inauguration hugging her great-niece gained traction.
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"To have your story — your actual sketches, your concept — be out there with, like, Schiaparelli [who designed Lady Gaga's inauguration look] and Thom Browne [who designed one of the outfits worn by Ella Emhoff] — is a fashion industry goal."
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For now, Hawes is honored that her work, in its small way, was part of history.

"I was told my whole life, 'You could be president, too, one day,'" she said.

"And now it's like, you can. It's not just like a pipe dream."
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