Megan Hess is one of the world’s most well-known fashion illustrators, having illustrated portraits for the New York Times, Italian Vogue, Vanity Fair, Prada, Cartier, Dior and FENDI. Not only is Megan a talented artist, but she has also written and illustrated seven best-selling books, is a mum, an artist in residence to multiple international venues and has built a global business. She is a leader who inspires!
Megan was kind enough to share her experiences in starting a business and her reflections on being a leader.
I studied Graphic Design because it felt like a ‘real’ job in the art world, but I really always wanted to be an illustrator. I just never knew that it was a possible career choice! After working as an Art Director in Ad agencies for several years, I packed everything up and moved to London. It was in London that I worked in a million different creative jobs and my final job there realised that I had a burning desire to be an artist.
At this time, I was the Art Director for Liberty Department Store. While I loved art-directing fashion, I loved illustrating it more. I started to do very small illustrations for Liberty and from this other art directors saw my work and little commissions began to follow. After about a year I found myself with non-stop work. I wasn’t earning a fortune, but I’d never been happier, and I knew I was going to do this forever.
As my clients got bigger and better, I was able to be a little more selective, and just work on briefs that I knew had a great creative opportunity. Then in 2006, I got a call in the middle of the night from Candace Bushnell’s publisher asking if I would illustrate her next novel ‘One Fifth Avenue’. This was when things took off at rapid speed for me. Her book became a New York Times bestseller, and I met with Candace, and she asked me to illustrate all her previous books including the cover of ‘Sex and The City’. Once ‘Sex and the City’ was released I was contacted by TIME magazine in New York to create portraits for them.
Following this, I began illustrating for Tiffany & Co, Chanel, Dior, Cartier, Vanity Fair, Italian Vogue, Bergdorf Goodman and Ladure. Ironically, at the same time as my work finally took off, I had my first baby!! It’s funny, I always tell people that I haven’t really slept since 2006!!
At first, I was terrified of hiring staff because I had worked on my own for so long. But as soon as I had my first employee, I realised I should have hired someone years ago! My business dramatically grew, and I was suddenly able to get back to focusing on creating. It was the best business decision I ever made.
I always start with personality. I believe if someone has a great personality and is intelligent, they have the capability to do anything. My team is small, so it’s important that everyone gets along and respects one another.
It’s very important to me that everyone feels safe and loved. Even though it’s work, we all spend a lot of time together so everyone feeling good is so important. I’m so proud to say I work within a group of women that feel like family. I’m very lucky.
Getting paid to do what I love for a living and being a Mother. I see that as a huge luxury to be able to do both, and it’s something that I’m very grateful for every day. I’ve also been able to donate many pieces of my work for charities and causes all over the world, and in some small way, I feel proud that one of my drawings may have helped someone where.
As Creative Patron of Ovarian Cancer, I’ve also had the privilege of working with the most inspiring team of people trying to raise awareness and funds for the development of an early detection test for Ovarian Cancer.
I am very grateful to all the amazing brands that I have worked with. For me, it’s been years of building those relationships. Each new project attracts a new client, and I have been fortunate to have been commissioned by such diverse and creative companies all over the world.
I’m a big picture person. I don’t like to micromanage. I’ve always believed in the theory that it is best to work with people who are faster, smarter and much better at certain things than me. I know my strengths, and I love to let my team manage and take ownership of their roles. I’ve learnt that autonomy is very important for people to grow and for a company to grow.
Ha! Well, sadly no although I wish it did. Actually, my studio always looks pretty good because we all make an effort to keep it ready for both chic clients who drop by and last-minute photoshoots. My home is sometimes completely tidy and lovely, and other weeks I have piles of washing, dishes and school projects everywhere!! It’s a normal household full of lovely chaos!
I hand draw all my line work with a custom Montblanc pen and ink, then I either leave it black and white or add colour with gouache, watercolour and digital means. Some of my illustrations are very fast. I usually post a quick sketch on my Instagram account each morning (@meganhess_official) and I only ever give myself 10 minutes for that – because I have so many deadlines to get through! Most of my work can take anywhere from an hour to several days. It just depends on the complexity of the illustration.
If it’s for a client, it starts with a brief, and I always give myself a good amount of initial time to dream and get inspired about what I’m going to draw. Sometimes I’ll do initial sketches or create a mood board of concepts and ideas. Then I’ll discuss with my clients where my direction is heading. Then it’s to the physical drawing phase, and I’m usually in absolute joy creating the final image.
See the magical work of Megan Hess.
About the author
Anastasia Benveniste loves anything digital or creative and is passionate about human rights. She gets enormous amounts of personal satisfaction through her work in digital communications, as it allows her to share people’s stories. She has a Masters in Design Communication, and her favourite academic experience was spending a semester studying at Yale University. Outside of work, she loves art history, painting and anything monogrammed! www.benvoa.com
You can always come up with a reason why you should not speak up. Everyone has a past story or memory of a time they spoke up and it backfired, blew up in their face or just plain didn’t work out. But that doesn’t have to be your story now.
I’ve overcome shyness several times in life – first, by creating my translation (and first ever) business in my 40s; just being willing to talk to people and let them know I had a business took courage, as not everyone was supportive of my endeavor, and I had many opportunities to give into self-doubt. Even more challenging was a time I lost my physical voice after a surgery. I was diagnosed with vocal paralysis, which meant speaking became difficult, unpredictable and unreliable, my sounds coming out strangely and erratically, even after I underwent years of vocal therapy.
I could have given up and stayed hidden, but I made a different choice, and it led me to radically change and empower my voice in all areas of my life. Here are 6 ways I helped myself overcome shyness and find my true voice:
It was only when I began to make a very different type of commitment to my voice – that of finding my true inner voice (no matter what occurred with occurred with my outer one!) – that I began a journey to successfully overcome the debilitating shyness, developing confidence and ease with speaking both out in the world and in my own life. Are you willing to acknowledge that you have the power to change this, and to make the commitment to you that you will have your voice?
How much of the shyness you currently have going on are learned reactions and behaviors, as well as awareness of others around you? All of us have had an experience of walking into a room and sensing the mood in the room. When and in what situations does “shyness” come up for you the most?
If you’re willing to acknowledge that some shyness you’ve learned from others, and some parts are what you picked up from others around you in the moment, you can ask yourself, “So how much of the shyness I thought was mine, isn’t?” And if it’s possible a lot of it isn’t yours, how much confidence and ease do you actually have available that you’ve never acknowledged?
Self-doubts and criticisms keep shyness in place. When I started truly listening to my inner-dialogue with myself, I realized it was mostly negative. I was afraid to speak up and make a fool of myself, using that fear to withdraw.
I decided to challenge those fears. Whenever a negative thought come up, I made a conscious choice to stop believing it. I made a commitment that I was changing my point of view completely, and then employed different ways to replace the negative thoughts with an empowering alternative – such as kindness, gratitude, and self-acknowledgement.
When your attention is on gratitude, judgments cannot stay in place. Gratitude is inherently empowering, while judgement is inherently disempowering. Choose gratitude for you and praise yourself for what you accomplish, what you are great at, what is different and unique about you. Everything in your life that you enjoy is there because you created it and chose to have it. Have you acknowledged that lately?
Every judgement we make against ourselves is like closing and locking a door to a tiny room. A question can open a door for you to see beyond that tiny room. One of my favorite questions is, “What’s right about me I am not getting?”
Negative self-talk focuses on making ourselves wrong. But if you ask, “What’s right?” you turn everything 180 degrees and can see yourself in a totally new light.
A major component of shyness is holding onto self-doubt: the places where we have stopped (or never started) trusting ourselves. Trusting you and listening to your inner guidance system is one of our most potent allies. It may take a while to rebuild your self-trust, but it just takes practice. Trust isn’t about making the right choice, or having everything work out perfect, it is knowing that you can trust you to handle whatever comes.
Even when you have made a ‘bad’ choice, or something didn’t work out, how often have you landed on your feet? And the times when didn’t work out, where they also the times that you overrode yourself to listen to other people – whether it was taking a job, going on a date or buying that recommended brand when somewhere you knew it wasn’t going to work for you? Start practicing looking to yourself for the answers – ask, “What do I know about this?” “What is my sense of this situation?” and “What would work for me here?” Put your own instincts back into the picture and give your inner voice a chance to be heard.
Creating the confidence and willingness to speak out beyond shyness truly is an “inside job”. If you are willing to recalibrate and revolutionize the way you perceive and speak to yourself, the way you communicate and interact with the world around you will change naturally and come much more freely (and with a lot more joy!) as a result.
Norma Forastiere is a business mentor, natural therapist and certified facilitator of several Access Consciousness® special programs. A self-proclaimed seeker, Norma began practicing mediation at an early age and then went on to study metaphysics and several energy healing and natural therapy modalities. A native Portuguese speaker with a proficiency in English and Spanish, Norma offers workshops and consultations for those willing to explore greater possibilities in life, communication and business.
“Lead by example” is a saying that does the rounds so often it’s become a cliché, and yet it remains a truism to keep in mind. After all, real leaders are those that forge their own path and inspire others to follow, instead of expecting unconditional support.
But to lead like this, you need a strong sense of self conviction.
To help you along, we’ve taken inspiration from women in STEM fields (that’s science, technology, engineering and maths to anyone who’s acronym averse) who have overcome the odds and blazed a trail in male-dominated industries. If they can do it, we all can, and their lives give us invaluable lessons to keep in mind going forward.
Even the most empowered person suffers moments of self-doubt. But when you feel this doubt take root, remember that the brave are the ones that change the world.
Two-hundred years ago, Ada Lovelace worked out how to improve the Analytical Engine, an advanced calculator her mentor Charles Babbage had devised. She would have been forgiven for never publishing her thoughts at all, as Babbage, much her senior, was a respected force within the scientific community. But Lovelace was fearless. And in the process, gave us the blueprint for what many consider to be the world’s first computer programme.
Voices matter, and just as Lovelace put her weight behind her ideas back in the 1840s, female leaders are navigating the workplace and driving the conversation. Do you suffer from the inability to speak up during meetings? It’s an instinctive reaction, says leadership coach LaKisha Greenwade. But as Greenwade notes, this safety mechanism actually inhibits us more than it protects us. Because in the end, “respect comes when one’s voice is heard.”
Marie Van Brittan Brown worked as a nurse in Queens, New York in the 1960s. Her odd hours often meant she was home alone, so to overcome her fear, she devised a home security system that she could operate remotely from her bedroom.
Now, we’re not saying that you should use engineering ingenuity to overcome every one of your problems, but you should be honest about what’s bothering you, and be prepared to tackle it in the here and now. Or as TEDx speaker Karima Mariama-Arthur puts it beautifully, “equivocation will always be your worst enemy.”
Quality is everything and it never goes out of style. There’s a reason Émilie du Châtelet’s translation of Newton’s Principia is still the preferred French-language version today, despite her work dating back to the 1700s.
That being said, there’s a difference between championing excellence and wanting perfection. Always guard against the paralysing effect of “perfectionist tendencies”, says Jill Hauwiller of Leadership Refinery. If you’re waging this mental battle, take a few deep breaths or go for a walk to clear your head. The idea is to produce work that sees you excel, not get so caught up in being the best that you can’t produce that work in the first place.
Katsuko Saruhashi was a passionate eco scientist who risked the wrath of the United States government when she spoke out about weapons testing on islands in the Pacific. Saruhashi’s passion shone through, and she was not only believed, she helped change the laws governing nuclear weapons testing.
Whatever your passion is, make sure you explore it in full, and are absolutely confident in yourself. Women can sometimes feel the need to “shrink themselves to seem non-intimidating,” says Niya Allen-Vatel, a life coach and leadership consultant. But in reality, “shrinking does nothing but delay your voice from being heard and taken seriously.”
When you’re committed and inspired by something, you’ve got every reason to share your beliefs.
Typecast as a Hollywood starlet, Hedy Lamar was seen as the Angelina Jolie of ‘40s cinema, but unbeknownst to the public, she had a secret passion for inventing. During World War 2, she devised a system to help Allied torpedoes hit their target, courtesy of a signal that hopped frequencies, meaning it couldn’t be intercepted by enemy ships. Though her work was never used during the war effort, her blueprint for frequency hopping would later be used as one of the grounding principles in the invention of Bluetooth, validating Lamar all along.
Hedy Lamar reminds us that typecasting people is folly, and that no one should live by others’ expectations. People who are not easily categorised often leave the biggest legacy on the world.
Feeling inspired, or have daughters or nieces who would love to know more about these women and many others? To learn more about Lamar and the women outlined in this article, head over to the STEM Superheroines campaign, a joint effort between Currys PC World and the Microsoft Surface, where you’ll find yet more amazing inventors and yet more inspirational life stories.
