Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast: Making Art Work
Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast: Making Art Work
#355: Elizabeth Solomeina (Jewelry Designer) (pt. 1 of 2)
This week on the podcast is part one of our interview with Elizabeth Solomeina. She’s a Russian-born jewelry designer, and co-founder and managing director of Flying Solo—a retail marketplace for independent luxury designers. She founded Flying Solo to address the need for a central space for designers to sell their work and connect with clients, stylists, and press. Her own jewelry incorporates materials such as topaz, pearls and diamonds and fashions them into Art Deco and Elizabethan-inspired pieces.
Tune in to hear how Elizabeth’s hard work and passion grew an idea into operations in NYC and Paris, and more innovative activities on the horizon!
Welcome to the Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast, Making Art Work. We highlight how entrepreneurs align their artistry, passion, and vision to create and pursue opportunities to capture value in the arts. The views expressed by guests on the Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast are solely their own, and do not necessarily represent the views of the podcast or its hosts. The appearance of a guest on the podcast, the venture they represent, or reference to any product or service does not imply an endorsement or recommendation by the podcast or its host. The content provided is for entertainment and informational purposes only, and does not constitute business advice. Here are your hosts, Andy Heise and Nick Petrella.
Andy Heise:Hi Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast listeners. My name is Andy Heise.
Nick Petrella:And I'm Nick Petrella. Elizabeth Solomeina is with us today. She's a Russian-born jewelry designer and co-founder and managing director of Flying Solo, a retail marketplace for independent luxury designers. She founded Flying Solo to address the need for a central space for designers to sell their work and to connect with clients, stylists, and press. Her own jewelry incorporates materials such as topaz, pearls, and diamonds, and she fashions them into Art Deco and Elizabethan-inspired pieces. We'll link to Flying Solo in the show notes so you can see all of their clothes, jewelry, and more. Thanks so much for being on the podcast, Elizabeth.
Elizabeth Solomeina:Thank you so much for having me, and it's a pleasure to be here.
Nick Petrella:Let's begin by having you give us a thumbnail sketch of your education and your path from living in Russia to owning a popular fashion retailer in New York City and Paris.
Elizabeth Solomeina:Well, um, it's um certainly been a journey, and uh I always been in creative fields. So I started my career as a graphic designer. Uh so that was my passion when I was in my teens and early 20s, so I thought that's what I'm going to dedicate my entire life to. So I was part of the beginning of the web design and all those like really cool stuff. I made it to Art Laborative Studio, which uh was the largest and probably still is the design studio in Moscow, and I was the second youngest person there out of 200 people. I was very happy about that. I um studied in British High School of Art and Design, and after that I felt that um I want to try myself somewhere else. I want to go to New York, I want to explore New York and see how life is here. So I moved to New York uh to study New York Film Academy. So film and video was my next great passion, and uh funny enough, everything that I learned before with graphic design really worked really well with um video and film. So the same principles, composition, uh colors, everything that I learned already had a really big advantage um compared to a lot of my um peers there. So I graduated from there and went to work. Um went to work in video, I spent uh quite a bit of time there, fell in love with post-production. I loved sitting in the editing room, I loved the after effects, I did quite a lot in that space, but somehow I felt uh it was time after the whole thing to um to do something that is more tangible. So that was uh my personal need to start doing something more tangible. So me and my sister started um jewelry collection, and jewelry was always something that we both really loved, and because both of us had um background in design, it came quite easy. Uh, yes, it was different materials, yes, there were different sets of rules, how things need to be done. You certainly need to learn construction and how things are made, but at the core of things, it's still the same principles of beautiful things, how composition and color and a lot of other design principles are combined, uh, but in this um in this example in physical objects. So we uh started doing this, and um, our jewelry line is called Salamina as our last name, and uh it was starting to be quite successful. So we started getting customers, so it was clearly something that people really liked uh to wear, and we started we started getting a little bit of a community of those clients, and it came to a point when we knew both of us that we wanted bigger things uh for for the jewelry brand. Like we wanted to be in big magazines, we wanted to be in the Vogue, L Harpers, we wanted to do uh shows with it, so we wanted to present our collection, we wanted to be in physical store, and obviously you want to be like in the center of things, like for New York, it's obviously soho. And uh there was no path to get there, really. I mean, unless you're willing to spend a significant amount of money that we didn't have at the time, and uh it was it was a very weird situation, so you know that you want something bigger, you know that you have that ability to uh make it bigger, but at the same time you don't know how. So there is no clear path for a smaller brand to get from that stage when you're already having customers having sales, like clearly the market is responding well to that to get to that next level, unless you have really big financial backing.
Andy Heise:Right.
Elizabeth Solomeina:So um at the time I met a lot of other designers that were kind of in the same situation. I met other jewelry designers, I met other clothing, accessory designers, and all of us were sharing the same problem that we are here, we want bigger things, we want to have our own retail space, but we have no not enough money for all of those. So we came up with a crazy idea to actually make one, and I was um um I wasn't the only person that started flying stolis, actually, it was 10 co-founding designers at the beginning. We started very, very small on in a little pop-up on Thomson Street in Soho. It was so small that if one of us was in the store, another have to like kind of go sideways to get to the back of it. Uh but it was so much fun to do because it was 10 of us selling in one store. I mean, we're sharing rent, we're sharing expenses. The store was so tiny that we could actually afford it. And we get to we get to see the reaction of our customers, we get to get the real feedback from the world, like how people that just came from the street, that didn't know us, didn't hear about us, uh, react to our things, that they buy things. And interestingly enough, within that time, uh so we did multiple times those like series of pop-ups. Um, other designers start stopping by, they're like, Hey, how do I join your amazing group? You guys clearly do something right, it's look like so much fun, you're making sales, you're getting attention. And our answer was always, look, the store is super tiny. It's like 10 of us, it's already overcrowded. So uh we came up somehow with a crazy idea that we wanted a bigger permanent store. And my fellow designers uh decided um that I'll be the person who will have to find the physical space and figure out how we are going to get money for it and all those things, and they will work tirelessly to make it happen. Uh, so like they'll find more other designers that uh will be really cool follower concept, they'll help with everything else, and I'll be the person to find the location and um uh financial backing. So we did. Uh thankfully, I had some uh connections uh from my previous career, which was film industry, and I found an investor for us to open our very first store. Um, the very first store was in Mowbray Street, it was 2 to 4 Mowbray, and that was at that time for us such a huge store compared to what we used to. We came in to that store and it felt endless. It felt like you can I can't even describe that feeling. It felt like it's just endless. You can put so many things. We were concerned that it's just not enough inventory to put in this entire store because it felt so big. Right now, obviously, compared to all the stores that we operate, it feels quite small. I passed by it uh recently and I was like, wow, what felt so big at the time is actually quite small to where we are right now. However, that summer, it was 2016, we all went to work because the space that we got was very raw. Like it's literally was nothing else there before. And while we did secure money for deposits and the first rents and everything, we didn't really have any kind of construction budgets. Uh so very first store, and uh whoever been to that, um we had to come up with a whole design on our own and how we're going to, as designers execute it. Again, thankfully, we were all very creative people and very resourceful. And on top of it, all ten of us really wanted to make it happen. It was there we wouldn't take note for an answer. We went so far, we wanted to make sure that the whole store is going to work. So the first racks in our store were actually built out of copper pipes that we got from Home Deeper because we simply didn't have enough budgets for anything real, like custom-made, like we have in stores right now. Um we went there, we went to Home Deeper, sketched them, uh, brought them to life. Actually, that summer, each of us, all the designers that were original 10 group, and then another 20 that joined us, so it became 30. All of us learned how to cut copper pipes. Um I still have that skill, if any if anyone wondering. Um, and the first furniture and counters were brought by different designers, some were from their houses, some from their studios. So it's little bits and pieces were combined in the store, but we put so much love in that store that I think it really showed. A lot of people thought that it was professional design, and the rawness of it was actually an architectural thing that we decided to execute reality because we just simply didn't have money and we had to use our creativity to cover up for it. But it was a super cool store, and um, a lot of people followed. We got a lot of great uh designers, we got a lot of great customers there. They were super excited to shop something new that was never on the market before. The problem at the time for the stores was that a lot of stores started closing down, including Barney's, including, I mean, Barney's was on already on decline, about to close. Opening ceremony uh closed a year later, but they were all kind of already shrinking. The problem was that they weren't um so because they were shrinking, they weren't able to buy new and exciting designers, they weren't able to take risks on independent designers. So there was clearly a gap in the market where you as a customer wanted to shop something cool. I mean, fashion meant to be cool, right? Like we want to express ourselves through fashion, but everything in stores was very safe because they clearly wanted, I mean, they wanted to make uh money, they wanted to keep their lights on, understandably. So when people came to our store because it was such a different thing, uh they were all very excited. And industry surprisingly followed after that because we um what what happened in the month was somehow an um editor from uh Women's Way Daily wandered in our store. I don't know how it happened or why it happened. Turns out she looked around and then emailed us saying that I would like to do a profile on all of you guys and Elizabeth would like to talk to you about the whole thing. To the point when the article came out, I thought it's not real. I was like, it's not even possible. We I don't think that we were even showing up on Google Maps at the time. So how is it even how is it possible that we all went like we were already being noticed by media? But it was all real, and the first profile on us did come out, and a lot of media did follow because we were such a new exciting concept for the industry. And on top of it, there were a lot of bets. Uh as most we were, uh people were somehow already discussing us. Uh, there were a lot of bets that we would not last a few months. And the reasoning was that designers could not possibly collaborate and be under the same roof and not get competitive. I mean, right now in 2025, we hear all about collaborations. All fashion brands collaborate together to create new collections. It's very common right now. In 2016, no one heard about that. So, all we heard about that fashion industry is brutal, everybody is against each other, everybody's just there to kill their competition, and therefore the designers study design under the same roof will never survive. Collaborative concept, especially for young brands with eagers, will never happen. For me, I didn't pay much attention to those things at the time, but when I someone literally tell to my face that you guys will not last, it was rather surprising because um I come from a creative industry, as I mentioned, and creative industry is always very collaborative. So even making a website, you cannot do it alone, or couldn't do at the time when I was there. Uh, film production, oh my god, that takes a really big crew to execute it from production to post-production to pre-production, and all those things, it's a big group of people working together, and there is a lot of magic in uh creating things together with other creative people because you trade ideas, you um you talk to each other about things that excite you, and you're clearly in the same field because that's the exciting part of it. So the same starts happening within uh the first flying soul store pretty much right away. We start trading ideas, uh, we were showing each other new designs. So it's like, look, I'm sketching this, what do you think? Someone will give us a feedback on, and it's it's all became very real, and we're learning from each other. If one of us gets a success somewhere, like um some they did something right, they right away share with the whole community, and the people start implementing the same thing, being very excited. So, because when uh when people start succeeding within flying solo, all of us become more successful. If someone starts getting more attention, they start bringing more customers to the store. So all of us were benefiting. So there was a direct benefit for all of us to become more successful. And that was always the big foundation of flying solo. And yes, the industry did follow. We started not to just to sell the product, um, we started getting a lot of requests from media to do press pools. So, for people that don't know, press pool is basically when someone takes a piece from your collection, let's say the dress from your collection, and take it for the photo shoot, they photograph it for an editorial, like basically a picture in the magazine, they'll give you a credit for that, saying this dress is by so and so, and uh that's how you get more known, that's how people start seeing you more, and um uh that that's how you basically develop the PR side of your brand. So things like that start happening to us too. So we were like, okay, we needed to do a press showroom as a separate part of the store, and then we came up with a very crazy idea in February of 2017. We're like, what if we'll do a fashion show? Like, let's do New York Fashion Week fashion show. Again, idea was um, I absolutely loved the part that our group was so naive that we had absolutely no hesitation when we came up with new ideas. We're like, let's just do it. Let's do it, yeah, let's do it. That sounds super fun. Uh right now, knowing what I know about the industry show production, and we did 41 shows at this point, so I have a lot of experience doing that. I was like, oh wow. We had absolutely no idea what we're doing, and somehow I really would like if I have to bet what were the chances that we execute our very first show successfully, I would not give us a very good chance. But at the same time, we had so much desire to make it happen, we had so much excitement around us that we just made it happen. So, our very first Neurofashion Week show um was uh was a big success, and I really don't understand how we pulled it off because very few of us even remotely did something related to the show production. But again, we've we made something that was authentic to us. We uh we took a very raw space, so the very first show was at Kenneth Cole Studios, and uh so they at the time stopped doing their shows and uh they were renting out the space for other people for the shows, and it was very raw, uh also very raw space, and we came in there and it's the only space we could really afford at the time, but it was cool, and uh it was very raw, so we couldn't possibly build out beautiful decorations or anything like this, like big brands do. But we wanted to look like we are a big established brand because again, we had a lot of creativity. So we looked at that, looked at that, and we're like, Well, we are flying solo, so let's make an airport out of it. So so we did, and airport was nothing but the yellow tape in the middle, so the kind of the runway, which already yeah, this is your runway. We put a I I think it was one of our interns, uh, with those I forget what it's called, the light things that um that people like direct planes with. Or yes, so we put someone at the end, so that was the other part, and our entire schedule of the brands how we're showcasing was a uh board, like like the flights appear, and that was already very cool enough. So it's already gave us that age, and people thought that we really thought it through, and you know, again, uh it's uh the power broke, I would call it the power broke.
Nick Petrella:I love that.
Elizabeth Solomeina:Yes, so and what again You didn't know that you couldn't do it, yes, exactly. It was the only way for us to go forward, and what other thing really um I guess was favorable to us that season? So a few days before the show, so we're already preparing for the show, we're fitting the models, all the preparation. I mean, uh, it's very busy, so we had to prepare offside because we obviously could afford to rent the space only for half a day. Yes, uh, we're preparing in our store. And that was 2017, uh it was um when Trump got to the office in the very first time, and there were protests in airports where he was uh for those who remember, he was trying uh not to let people into the country and things like that. So people were protesting uh in airports. So and we were just there very late night, uh preparing for the show, two days before the show, and someone was like, hey, but we also airport, and there are protests in airport. How about we make the show also kind of a protest, but at the same time very fashionable one? So we will not make political statements, but we'll make a statement about fashion, about us being united, about that we stand for everybody, and we did a lot of uh really cool signs like uh saying like we stand united in heels and uh things like that. So very cool creative things.
Andy Heise:Yeah.
Elizabeth Solomeina:And so and we went to the show. So the show day was um was one of those um very adventurous days when it was the biggest snowstorm of the winter, our truck couldn't get in on time, we had to carry things to the venue because obviously we didn't have money for the movers, things like that. So while we did invite Press to our show since we got somewhat already known within Press, Press wasn't really happy about the fact that, I mean, we're still very like a bunch of small designers and they already taking a chance on us being in your during your fashion week uh with us while not being able to cover other shows that were happening that morning. So we're already delaying the show and um because unloading the truck and everything. And again, uh there was a report also from Women's Way Delhi who's supposed to cover the entire show, or at least he came in to see what we're up to if he wants to cover. And the photographer is like, guys, I'm so sorry, I really have to go. We have another show to cover, we just cannot stay here. We're like, well, but I mean, we're almost done and everything, and they're like, it's it's nothing personal, it's just you know, you guys delayed it and we have to go. So at that exact moment, when uh they were about to leave, we start uh, you know, lining up uh, you know, models and everything with those signs. And as soon as they saw the signs, they're like, oh my god, it's actually going to make it to the article because they weren't even sure if you know our designs or whatever are going to make it there. They're like, it's going to make it, you guys are the ones that are doing it right and making a statement. We actually stay. I don't know what show they missed. Like, uh and whoever, yes, and we apologize to whoever whoever they missed that time, but it was our first big coverage of the show, and again, it's put our show on a big stage with other really big brands. And again, when we opened it.
Nick Petrella:So that was your that was your big break then?
Elizabeth Solomeina:It was our big break, and you know how surreal that is. I mean, we were the the first half a year, we're just like really cool uh independent designer store, and God knows how like how long we're going to last, but people were talking about us at the moment. It's like summer thing, people just you know coming in. And then all of a sudden, the next day after the show, you open one of the biggest and most important publications in uh fashion, and we are next to the biggest brands that showcase in your fashion week. You the moment is so surreal, you just cannot even. I think I had to click it multiple times because I just I was like, I can't believe that is that. So, and then the rest was uh history, so we just keep growing. Uh, there was a lot of other really cool adventures we keep growing. So, right now we are at Broom Street, like our biggest location ever. It's significantly bigger than our first mobile group.
Nick Petrella:I mean, the growth that you've experienced. Before Andy gets to his next question, I have one question just to make sure that we understand. What's the price point of your jewelry? Is it you talking fifty to a hundreds? Are you talking thousands?
Elizabeth Solomeina:Um, so we have uh in terms of the jewelry for uh Salamina, uh we do have um um a few price points or so. Some is more uh contemporary, that will be anywhere from 150 to 500, and we also do some more expensive custom work that will be in the thousands. But those uh those pieces are mostly one of a kind.
Nick Petrella:Yeah, no, that's good. That's gonna be helpful for the uh for the listeners.
Andy Heise:And that's that that's an amazing story, and I I can I sense your enthusiasm and excitement and passion for for that entire journey that that you uh that you just told us about. Uh but I want to I want to go back to the starting of the jewelry company Solomon with your with your sister. Uh-huh. Um and you were living in different cities at the time. Uh different countries at the time. I mean one was in Paris and you were in New York, yeah.
Elizabeth Solomeina:So how she she actually lives in London and I live in New York, yeah.
Andy Heise:Okay, very good. Yeah, sorry about that. London and New York. Uh so how I mean, how do you launch a jewelry business with uh uh co-founders in two different continents?
Elizabeth Solomeina:Very good question. Actually, in order for anyone to execute something like that, you really need to already have a strong connection. And we did by blood. So that was an interesting thing.
Andy Heise:You'd have a choice there, right? Yeah.
Elizabeth Solomeina:Yes. But we're uh we always, even though we lived in different countries, we talked all the time. I mean, like we literally talk every day, yeah. Uh all the time, and we always both of us were very interested in doing a business, and we both were very entrepreneurial from the start. So it was in uh in our DNA to start something. So I felt like it was just a matter of time for us to figure out what is the first business we're both going to start, and we obviously wanted to do it together.
Announcer:Yeah, yeah. Thanks for listening. If you like this podcast, please subscribe. Visit arts entrepreneurship podcast.com to learn more about our guest and how you can help support artists, the arts, and this podcast.
