Cecilia Cassini is definitely not your average 10-year-old
child. The fifth grader recently founded
her own fashion line and is making a profit from selling her unique
handmade clothing for kids and teens at Los Angeles boutiques. She’s also been
filling special orders that are coming in from around the world, according to
her mother Michelle Cassini.
Cassini has been dubbed “America’s youngest fashion
designer,” but that’s only part of her story. She’s a kid with a huge social
conscience and a desire to give back. Many of her dresses, for example, are
made from old repurposed clothing that she scores from the closets of her older
sister, mom, and friends instead of buying new fabrics.
This not only saves her
money on materials, but also is better for the planet. Her mother thinks that
her dresses are popular in places like Germany, Italy, and France because they
are made from recycled materials.
The young fashion maven regularly designs and donates
dresses to raise money for charities such as Susan
G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, Doctors Without Borders, and Clothes Off Our Backs. She also gives
her dresses to homeless girls. “I want to give back to the people who don’t
have what I have,” she says. “Every little girl should have a dress so I wanted
to donate dresses.”
Cassini, who lives in Encino, California, travels to classrooms
at other schools to inspire her peers to pursue their dreams and do what they
are passionate about. Her message: You don’t have to be an adult to do
worthwhile things.
According to her
mom, Cassini’s passion has always been clothing. From the time Cassini could point, she was putting together her own outfits, and
she regularly came home from preschool with designs painted or glued onto
her clothing.
But it wasn’t until Cassini secretly “redesigned” her older
sister’s brand-new dress at the ripe old age of five that her family fully understood just
how interested she was in designing clothing.
She received a sewing machine for her sixth birthday from her
grandmother and went immediately to work. “From the moment she got that machine,
she has not stopped sewing,” says her mom, who didn’t expect Cassini’s interest
to last for so long or turn into a business.
In fact, Michelle Cassini was worried that no one was going
to show up at her daughter’s first trunk show at Tough Cookies Children’s Boutique in
Sherman Oaks, California, on November 14, 2009. It turns out her worries were
unfounded.
People lined up outside the store before it opened, thanks to some
good publicity, including a CBS segment
and a front-page story in the Los Angeles Daily News.
Her trunk show was sold out and she’s been busy filling orders ever since.
Cassini seems to be taking
her early success in stride and finds time to sew dozens of dresses a week,
maintain good grades, play tennis, and hang out with her friends. How does she do it? She gets most of
her homework done at recess so she can come home and sew.
Besides, she doesn’t
view it as work. The whole process is pure fun, according to Cassini, from the
cutting up of old dresses to sewing them into fabulous new “masterpieces” to
selling the finished products.
All photos courtesy of Michelle Cassini.
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