We sat down with Sarah Lee, creator of Sarah's Silks, one rainy Autumn eve to hear her story on how her brand came to be. Sarah is the type of person who lights up any room, even via zoom, as vibrant as the silks she creates. Her story is a natural unfolding, inspired by her own child’s imaginative open-ended play.
How Sarah’s Silks Came To Be
30 years ago, Sarah’s 4-year-old son was asking daily for costumes. Sarah didn’t want to buy him expensive premade costumes, so she dyed a silk scarf green for him. This simple transformation immediately sparked his imagination, and she watched him transform the simple scarf into a Peter Pan tunic, a turtle shell, and a superhero cape immersed in open ended-play. She was inspired by his creativity and dyed more colours for him. Soon the neighbourhood children were playing with them too, using them to carry their dolls, make puppets, build forts, and dress up.
Sarah soon realized how great the silks are for imaginative play and slowly shifted away from her work as a nurse and lactation consultant, and began to offer Waldorf school shops her silks. The business quickly took off.
A Family Affair
Sarah's Silks has continued to evolve as a family affair since first being inspired by her son's dress up dreams. Her husband Mike, who recently retired (to grow plants), and two of her sons and their partners all work for the brand. The silk itself even holds family ties and is grown in China where her husband’s parents were born. There, the silk caterpillars feed on mulberry trees that are continuously cultivated, and the families who tend to them eat the contents of the cocoons as a traditional and sustainable high-protien food source. An ancestral extention to Sarah's already thoughtful community rooted creations.
The Rainbow Playsilk
Sarah's first big experiment was influenced by community as well. Inspired by seeing her son and his classmates at the Summerfield Waldorf School & Farm in Santa Rosa California choosing to paint rainbows every chance they got. From this observation Sarah went to work creating her first rainbow play silk, the same one still produced today, and the item she says still stands as her favourite after 30 years of creation.
A Past and Future of Creation
Sarah has been able to continue to create new products for the past 30 years through intentional and unintentional collaboration. Each week she and her team of seven from different departments (all of whom happen to be from Waldorf schooling or home schooling), gather together to make mood boards of new products. Inspiration comes from the natural world, children’s books and watching children play and the products dreamed up are cultivated within three months of conception.
They have only a few rules to construct their creativity around: there must be 3 ways to play with anything they make, and all their creations must be made with natural materials. Beyond those guidelines they let their ideas fly.
Sarah is further inspired by other artists and illustrators, collaborating in recent years with some of her personal favourites. Most recently, she partnered with Phoebe Wahl and Gemma Koomen to add illustrations to her playsilks, advent calendars and stockings.
Looking ahead, Sarah and her team will be focusing the coming year on creations for babies, working on their subscription program, and producing a new toy every month.
You can explore Sarah’s current creations, and many to come, on our online shop, HERE.
