Cathy Hay | Part 2

[PlainSalted]

Oof. In the video where she first talked about moving, there were comments from people wanting a meetup, so I could definitely see people putting in the effort.

And getting droves of people who think they know you at the door would be one thing, but there’s worse out there than that…

[Corsetiere101]

Presumably the UK is no longer big enough for her and BB (or the rest of the UK costume people she’s pissed off!!!)

[Koalaty_knits]

So? What's going on with the coat then?

[IrishBreakfastTea]

From what I remember from about 2 months ago, she's going to work on the embroidery herself while she's travelling. IIRC she got some custom embroidery frame to fit in her van or whatever it is she's going to travel around America in and probably try to hitch her wagon to the van-life influencing star. Expect occasional shots of the embroidery frame through an open van door with some stunning scenery in the background, but a lot more posts filled with excuses for why she doesn't have the time to do it.

[IrishBreakfastTea]

So, she dropped her video a few hours ago. She shipped the custom embroidery frame to her first place she was staying in the States and it took her 8 days to get around to sewing the velvet to the frame that she prepared before she left the UK. She spent a lot of the video repeating that she runs a business - YouTube and sewing aren't her full time job. She has Foundations Revealed (which you can sign up for and do the walking skirt course) and that takes a lot of time to run on her laptop. Like, this woman has staff, and I'm sure the other sewing instructors are the ones who are actually doing the legwork on the walking skirt course. I get that admin takes up so much time and emailing back and forth, but she really makes a meal out of it. All the comments are people saying they understand, it takes as long as it takes, they looove the fact that it's a slow project. So, she's found her core supporters who are happy to have her drag this out for 5 years before the coat is ever finished. But she did say she's got to have the first panel completed by the 20th of July (or something) which is when she's moving to her next location in the US, so maybe she will actually have to hunker down and get parts of it done.

[whatkatyread]

I have mixed feelings about this because on the one hand the whole process seems unbelievably glacial, but on the other hand I decided to add an embroidered cuff to some pyjama bottoms I'm making and I've been doing that embroidery since last August!

[IrishBreakfastTea]

I mean, sewing DOES take a long time. I spent 2 days prepping to make 2 16th century kirtles (making the paper pattern from the mock-up, transferring it to the fabric, chalk marking, then thread-marking, then adding applied decoration, doing the same to all the lining and interlining pieces). It was 16 hours of prep before I even cut the fabric and started sewing! So I get that prep takes a while, often far longer than we think it will. And even though I had some emails to deal with in all that, my admin didn't take hours and hours. And I didn't have to set up 2 cameras and film myself doing it, so there is that. But even with all that, I feel like she's got enough staff to delegate the real work of FR to, and she could make more real progress if she wanted to. I think her real niche on her YT channel is pitching self-help woo in the form of constantly showing the struggles of working on a project. We know she can do stuff when she wants to. How long did her oak leaf gown take? She was able to make that to a deadline to reach a target (wearing it to Costume College). I think the whole point of these videos is to materialise her "we all go through struggles, I've got the answer" pitch.

[Quaility]

I looked up her peacock dress progress recently and would like to point out that she made no progress at all on that beading from 2012 to 2021. Like, that was always a cursed project, but even a couple feather a *year* would have gotten farther along than she did:

Here's some receipts: https://www.laurietavan.com/cathy-hay-visits/ Notice the date - 2012. That is as far as she got. Looking at pictures from 2021.....it's the same panel. https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com /images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSRruwX4IWjYdQmhYzXW0P5d2ePs1EWeTEKaQ&usqp=CAU Her LJ appears to indicate that she started in 2011. So....she did the underwear (her words) and a partial panel of feathers in a year and then just completely stopped. I don't even see any evidence of her making a mockup for the gown itself, only that one panel of beadwork.

I'm now curious how long the oak leaf dress took her as a better comparison, but that was when she was much earlier in her GirlBoss career. (She was glowing about her very first Tony Robinson seminar in one of the Haiti fundraising posts)

[Koalaty_knits]

Yeah, sewing an embroidery can take a long time. But it's getting to be a bit much.

[TinyGIlligan]

JFC. I don't know why I'm still on their mailing list but apparently FR is raising prices again, to nearly double the current criminal rates.
The basic level is now $47/mo and the "Academy" is $97/mo.
Is anyone actually willing to pay this much? If so who, and can I come live with them as they're clearly rich and bad with money.

[IrishBreakfastTea]

JFC. I don't know why I'm still on their mailing list but apparently FR is raising prices again, to nearly double the current criminal rates.
The basic level is now $47/mo and the "Academy" is $97/mo.
Is anyone actually willing to pay this much? If so who, and can I come live with them as they're clearly rich and bad with money.

Holy shit, for probably only a little more than $1,200, one could get a cheap flight to London, and do an intensive workshop with the School of Historical Dress and make their corset in a few days with Luca's help. And they'd have a mini-holiday besides. Or commission a custom corset from Redthreaded or any number of other corset makers, and have a lot of money left over. Most of this information is out there and for much, MUCH cheaper than $97 a month. Buying the Patterns of Fashion books is a good start, and can be augmented with google searches and YouTube videos.

Foundations Revealed is the MLM of the sewing world, upselling people on overpriced crap they don't need and can get much cheaper elsewhere. But of course that's the business model Cathy Hay chose - the most exploitative one that keeps people on the hook with grandiose promises and emotive language ("can you afford NOT to prioritise your hobby?" - barf).

I watched her video yesterday where she finally started embroidering. Does she have to repeat everything 3 times? If I heard her talk about 'surrendering' one more time - both to her new embroidering routine/schedule, and to curving the leaves where they wanted to go - she doesn't half make a big deal of normal life changes. Imagine if everyone carried on the way she does! I have to wonder at the kind of people who like her schtick...

[PlainSalted]

I don’t know about the rest of the world, but $47/+-£37 a month strikes me as pricey with this cost-of-living crisis in the UK. That being said, she needs to find the money somewhere to pay her staff. I’m not sure what their numbers look like, but I’m guessing that if people have less time and money to spare, fewer people are signing up, so I guess it makes sense to raise them a little bit. This is a drastic increase, though.

[Justagoat]

I wonder if she’ll be at costume college this year? She taught a lot of classes there in the past but the influencers seem to be keeping their distance after the silk Road debacle.

[Blasting Bloomers]

I wonder if she’ll be at costume college this year? She taught a lot of classes there in the past but the influencers seem to be keeping their distance after the silk Road debacle.

They were keeping their distance before that…those flames were being kindled in 2019 regarding payment/nonpayment of instructors. Now that’s costube is big enough to afford them vintage cruises or sponsors get them all out to NY for private parties (and the pandemic honed their skills around zoom calls and group chats) I don’t think any of them need coco as an excuse to gather anymore.

Cathy might go to push foundations revealed I suppose, and well…she isn’t in those other cliques.

[andipales]

I'm quite curious who her main target audience is for foundations revealed now. If the rest of costube has taught us anything, it's that there are incredibly skilled people out there giving the same information away for free, on easily accessible platforms, so really, what is the point in FR these days?

[TinyGIlligan]

I'm quite curious who her main target audience is for foundations revealed now. If the rest of costube has taught us anything, it's that there are incredibly skilled people out there giving the same information away for free, on easily accessible platforms, so really, what is the point in FR these days?

The point is cheery self-help malarkey and motivational nonsense from someone who hasn't finished a project in years lol.
Who better to assure you that it's completely normal to procrastinate obscenely than the queen of not getting it done?

[queenofmyownfantasy]

I had a foundations revealed account for 4 months of so, with the promise of it being a amazing source well filled library blabla I hoped to find content on there that is hard to find because it is hard stuff, such as "sew along of making a vionnet dress", stuff like that, and I was... disappointed? Lots of the content was quite mainstream, meaning you can find books on it that are cheaper than the 29/month it was at the time (basic level) or totally free youtube videos, or extremely, extremely, ridiculously niche.

[TinyGIlligan]

I had a foundations revealed account for 4 months of so, with the promise of it being a amazing source well filled library blabla I hoped to find content on there that is hard to find because it is hard stuff, such as "sew along of making a vionnet dress", stuff like that, and I was... disappointed? Lots of the content was quite mainstream, meaning you can find books on it that are cheaper than the 29/month it was at the time (basic level) or totally free youtube videos, or extremely, extremely, ridiculously niche.

Same here. I joined during the early days of lockdown and quickly realized that what was promised vastly outweighed what was delivered. All you really get is the back catalog, which is great but not worth $50 a month, and "access to industry experts waiting to assist you!" which is in reality three overworked pros that will help you unless they're out on a job. Or they just miss your post. I've found WAY more value in supporting creators directly through Patreon.

[Secret_name]

If she doesn’t quit sending me “if you don’t care enough about your dreams to reply to this email, I’ll never send you another message and you can kiss those dreams goodbye” e-mail, I’m going to lose it. If I wasn’t annoyed before, I am now! This is the third one I’ve gotten, so at this point I can’t wait to actually be removed.

[IrishBreakfastTea]

WOW, that is hella manipulative! You won't accomplish your [sewing] dreams without Foundations Revealed. F*ck that sh*t! This is what I'm talking about - all the same kind of pressurised and emotive language that they use in MLMs to keep the reps on the hook for longer. "You're going to give up on your dreams!!!???". No, bitch, I'm "sUrReNdErInG" to logic and cold, hard facts. I know Cathy Hay got knocked down a peg or two after the Peacock Dress debacle, but I'd really love to see her crash and burn after reading that pushy crap.