Ten-year-old business owner
By Lori Bongiorno
More from The Conscious Consumer blog
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.
Environmental journalist Lori Bongiorno shares green-living tips and product reviews with Yahoo! Green's users. Send Lori a question or suggestion for potential use in a future column. Her book, Green Greener Greenest: A Practical Guide to Making Eco-smart Choices a Part of Your Life is available on Yahoo! Shopping and Amazon.com.
