If you have ever been to a fashion event in Denver, chances are you have bumped elbows with Brandi Shigley, of Fashion Denver. The bubbly and enthusiastic fashionista is Denver’s unofficial mascot for the fashion community, promoting and emceeing a plethora of events every season and promoting the fashion community from her World Headquarters in the Golden Triangle. She hosts workshops entitled “Love What You Do, Do What You Love,” and its clear from her positive aura that there is truly no one in Denver more qualified to speak on making a career out of following a passion.
Her story is an interesting one. Abandoned at an orphanage in the Philippines by her birth parents, she came to Denver at 16 months, and was adopted by a couple in Denver. Her father was a tower crane operator who worked on Republic Plaza and her mother worked at a bank. Shigley attended Smokey Hill High School and started making and selling handbags at a young age, when she says, “the internet was just getting started.” Soon her designs were being sold around the globe, and she was getting press attention from all over.
After her success in Denver, Shigley decided to move to California to follow her passion, and landed in San Deigo, San Francisco and LA. She says that the community of artists and designers she worked with out there were extremely supportive, but after a couple of years decided to come back to Colorado. Her experiences in California inspired her to start Fashion Denver in 2004, which started out as more of a boutique but has evolved into an advocacy and consultancy company of sorts for Denver’s budding fashion scene.
She has been a creative entrepreneur for the last 16 years, and has seen the fashion community in Denver “grow tremendously in the last several years. Designers are leaving LA and NY and moving their business out to Denver,” she says. But in addition to supporting fashion designers in the Denver area, Shigley keeps her World Headquarters, located at 1070 Banock Street in the Golden Triangle busy with friends and events, that include her Do What you Love workshops. This weekend, Shigley hosted Sahar Paz, in Denver promoting her book “Find Your Voice: The Life You Crave is A Conversation Away.”
Shigley met Paz, at a restaurant just after Paz left a psych ward she was checked into after an attempted suicide. Shigley offered her a scholarship to her “Do What you Love” workshop, and Paz flourished as a result of the opportunity eventually moving to NY and starting a non-profit in fashion and selling her line of jewelry. After getting carried away in the current of the NY scene, Paz got burned out, and decided to tell her inspiring story to others by writing a interactive memoir, sharing how she was able to change the way she talked to her self, and encouraging readers to do the same.
Shigley says she and Paz have an equal relationship, both inspiring each other to grow and change. And like Shigley, Paz was born abroad, in Iran during the cultural revolution and has found fashion as a creative outlet for her passions. Paz struggled with drugs, alcohol and shopping in her past, but says that its the way that she talks to her self that is her biggest challenge, which is what inspired her to write her book. She is heading to Houston, and Florida next on her promotional tour.
Shigley, on the other hand says she never struggled emotionally with her past and her story of adoption. She just recently visited her home country of the Philippines and some of the places that her biological family lived, but says she doesn’t harbor any resentment or anger towards her biological parents. “How could I be angry, I have had the most amazing life. There’s nothing I can’t achieve.” The trip, she says, grounded her and she felt at home. Seeing people who had a similar attitude and mannerisms as her made her feel connected immediately with the home she barely knew.
You would never know it, but Shigley is about to turn 40 years old, and hopes to spend her next decade focusing in even more on her passions. At the book event, another fashion Denver alumni, Megan Timlin, joined the party. She recently started her own boutique in the Highlands, Whorl, targeting the many NY transplants to the area with her minimal designs and Colorado based wares. A new generation of fashionistas are following in Shigley’s footsteps and with her enthusiastic support, doing what they love.
