“When I first met her, I thought that she was constantly a little bit drunk,” says Joy Cho, founder of design brand, who has known Gotch for more than a decade. “But that was just kind of her. The idea that she’s a little bit off-kilter. A little bit quirky.”
In “Upside,” Gotch traces a circuitous path from her childhood to Ban.do, accompanied by ADD, disordered eating and undiagnosed mental illness. In her 30s, a doctor diagnosed her bipolar 2 . Still styling, Gotch and her partner worked nights and weekends on their side hustle. They navigated the early days of e-commerce, hired a small team and got a win when Taylor Swift wore their hairpiece in
At Ban.do, the anxiety that Gotch had grappled with her whole life was an asset, something that, as she details in her book, propelled her to “double and triple check every product and every form and every label and also to question every decision.” Gotch thinks one of the reasons she resonates with people is her “lightheartedness in my approach.” Her followers and friends agree. “I think I recognized it as something I needed,” says Jenna Gagnier, a 21-year-old burgeoning clothing designer from Rochester, N.Y. “She talks about mental health in a way that doesn’t demean it but shows it can be funny at times and is also a really serious thing. It’s nice to see someone who’s talking about it and is also a successful person.
ohjoy Can you tell the LA people to wear mask? It’s proven to work in Hong Kong and Taiwan.