Life's highs and lows sometimes come together.
Alicia Pelletier was born the great-granddaughter of an NHL hall-of-famer and the granddaughter of a successful Prince George entrepreneur, but despite these advantages of pedigree, she skidded hard into personal dysfunction at a young age.
She is still significantly young, but she is now showing signs of being the offspring of Boston Bruins great Dit Clapper and Arby's Restaurant owner Don Clapper - scrappy, progressive, strong, focused on business. Her personal troubles are still so fresh, the consequences are everyday topics in her life, including issues with addiction and crime, but the front of the agenda is now her fashion design startup company and her modelling.
"Modelling is what got me started, but I'm trying to veer away from that," said Pelletier. "It was great to get me introduced to how the fashion business works, but now I'm working on getting my own clothing line out to the public. I saw how other people did it, I made some good friends who knew that side of the business, and now I'm getting ready to launch."
What she learned was, to have a clothing design operation didn't mean sewing your own shirts and skirts. There are many companies that create the garments in blank form, and the clothing designer finds blanks that match the creative images and logos you think will look good on those blank items. There are businesses that will take your designs and attach them to those blank shirts, pants, dresses, etc.
The clothing designer can even contract out the artwork by explaining the images in his/her imagination to someone who knows how to draw, paint or do computer graphics. Each step along the way costs the designer money: the wholesale rate for the blank clothing; the shipping of the blanks to the imaging company; the fees for the artist to make your original designs into a real image and in the format the imaging company can use to stamp it onto the clothing; then the shipping costs to you or the stores selling your stuff.
"You have to do your homework, because if you don't have quality clothing, your great designs aren't going to matter. If the shirt falls apart, nobody will buy it again, and your business dreams end right there," she said. "I think I've got good suppliers, I know I've got good designs, so we're moving forward. I'm following my dreams."
She is a little amazed herself. Walking the wrong path was a painfully recent journey. The road is still bumpy. What is smooth is her resolve to push on into a better future.
"I can't change my past. You can't take pills for it or pay it to change into something it wasn't. I'm calling my company Street Pharm Apparel because it is what I used to know and I want to stay connected to my past but built on it with positive business.
"I have to move with it, because it is never going to not be a part of who I was."
There isn't much glamour in the industry, she said, despite how it appears to those on the outside looking in. The fashion industry is a lot of hard work and constant hustling for future business, she said, but she has had a lot of fun, too. She has gotten several high-profile photo shoots - she estimates 12-15 by now - that have resulted in major international coverage in magazines and e-zines.
She has worked with fellow models like Australia's Wild Girls and Vancouver buzz-girl Rachel Rampage, star photographer Pep Williams in Los Angeles and Dark Stars Photography in Vancouver.
Her photos have ended up in Inked Magazine (Pelletier is heavily tattooed), Southern Ink, was the Tatalicious model of the year, InkFreakz.com, and many more.
In amongst all this, she is also a certified personal trainer and a hair colourist.
It adds yet more depth to her career options.
"My grandpa Don was my single greatest male figure in life," she said. "And he was all about business."
He died one year ago (July 3) "and I want him to be who I use as my inspiration."
With plenty of younger people in her family watching her redefine her own life and base it on creativity and progress, she is feeling more motivation than just herself.
It's what she was originally designed for, anyway.
