About
I created Take My Hand after having my first baby. As a woman who had never even changed a diaper before, the transition to motherhood was surreal. Every moment my daughter was asleep, I was obsessively Googling what color her poop was supposed to be, how much she should be sleeping, and how, for the love of God, to get her to breastfeed. It felt like my mind would never be at ease again.
When my daughter developed severe eczema, I was desperate to help her be comfortable. The best clothing I could find for her skin was made from viscose, but with my background in luxury fashion, I knew that viscose was terrible for the environment and low-quality. Organic cotton was still too scratchy for her. I knew that carefully-sourced modal would be the perfect sustainable fabric for super soft and durable baby apparel. Unable to find the clothing I needed for my baby, I set out to design my own. Take My Hand is sewn from OEKO-TEX Standard 100 certified fabric, and proudly made in the USA. At every step of production, these products are created by people who are paid a living wage, and work in a clean, safe facility under ethical working conditions.
As my daughter grew, nurturing her curious mind became one of my favorite things about being her mom. My daughter is always asking "why, why, why," and the more she asked, the more we learned about the world together. I wrote a couple of board books in honor of her constant questioning, and I designed them to match the clothing to create a little extra bit of connection during our bedtime reading. My board books are printed in the USA and are all edited by a professional science writer with decades of experience.
Children are inherently curious, and out of respect for their wonderful, wild minds, everything I design and write is child-centric and intentional. While parents are the decision-makers when it comes to choosing which products to bring into their homes, children are the end-users, and I am always designing with their day-to-day life at the top of mind.
Take My Hand is the perfect marriage of my pre-baby pursuits. After graduating from Indiana University with a degree in Apparel Merchandising and Marketing, I worked in luxury womenswear. I started at The Row, where I learned to define luxury as "something that makes your life easier." That's a lesson I've always carried with me. After several years in the fashion industry, I burned out, and decided to pursue my other passion: literature. I got an MFA from The New School, where I studied Creative Writing and Gender Studies. Writing children's books and designing the matching apparel has been enormously fulfilling. And as a busy working mom, I am always striving to create products that bring you true luxury: to make your life easier, and to finally, finally put your busy mind at ease.
x Julie