FLYING SOLO- 2025 : ELIZABETH SOLOMEINA

3/12/2025

Stacy Fan with jewellery designer and founder of Flying Solo's Elizabeth Solomeina

There’s no question, fashion is one of the hardest industries to break into. It’s cut throat and at least to start can feel like there is very little community. Huge funds need to be available up front, to make the collection, have a space to sell the collection, and a runway show? You’re talking $50,000-$100,000 USD.

So the solution? Flying Solo…

I first interviewed Elizabeth Solomeina, jewelry designer and founder of Flying Solo back in 2017. They had been open almost a year, and I found their concept completely inspiring.

Initially Solomeina had started the store with the idea of creating a space that serviced independent designer as a pop-up store. A place to create a customer base. As a jewelry designer, Solomeina had wanted clothes to sell along-side her pieces and also wanted a strong community feel. The idea soon grew from a three-day pop-up store idea to a full brick and mortar store. Designers loved the idea and as new designers came on board, Solomeina ended up eventually needing to move to a bigger space.

Their designers literally built the store. Designing it, home-depot runs, plumbing, literally putting it together themselves and in doing so, they created the absolute epitome of a community. Finally when it was set up, the designers would help with sales, curating the store and when their customers came in, give them the full history of their brand, and show their customers with passion how each piece was made and the inspiration behind the collection. Almost like a gallery of fashion if you will, but one where each piece is available to buy and customers had the honor of meeting the designer themselves.

In addition Flying Solo also pulled together with their designers to put on a fashion show and have done so every year since. And not just in NY but in Paris as well and just expanded to showing in Milan.

Just a few of the magazines, Flying Solo has been featured in. The space, downstairs in the Copper Showroom, where magazine shoots as well as other collaborations take place

They even opened up a Paris store in 2023. "It's been a long term dream for us, because it's Paris! We wanted to do it before covid but then a lot of things happened so we ended up opening in 2023. It's a gorgeous store, it is a little smaller than this one, but it is quite big for Paris. We have a two level store, we have close to 50 different brands there." Solomenia says.

"We continue to do Paris fashion week there. We also added Milan to our shows, so we’re going to Milan again this September. Over all, we just keep growing. We believe growing day by day, every time designers come to the stores they leave with this amazing feeling of they’ve arrived to a big stage. We want to make it all for them."

Flying Solo in New York

Having been there from the first store, Solomeina says, "You remember when all the designers had to do everything for themselves, the co-op (model)? Of course we changed it during that time. It wasn’t possible to have all the designers under one roof. Not everyone lives in New York. The majority of us don’t live in New York, but we’ve always wanted to create that sense of community, so they come to our shows. That’s the time we have the most number of designers in one place under the same roof."

The support and community feel that Flying Solo give is unmatched, "We do the majority of the work for them but the same rule applies. The show was always ‘By designers, and for designers’ And the majority of our crew are still designers. The original crowd that know how, maybe nervous or painful it is to do your first show or how hard it is to put your first collection out there, for people to judge, but we are there to support them. We are there to say to them that a lot of brands come back season after season. There are a lot of brands that stay in the store forever. And they do see a lot of value in us, and how we treat them. And we grow together, honestly. Everyone I saw at fashion week, there were people who had been with us since the Mulberry store (their first store). They, for instance only do shows now. For many reasons, they don’t want to be in the US market, they just want to do shows. But they all say how far we’ve come altogether. Starting from those small shows, to gigantic shows that are covered by a lot of press."

Elizabeth Solomeina after Paris Fashion Week

The tenacity that Solomenia has always shown has been so impressive, so although Covid was their "hardest test" I had no doubt that she would do everything to survive, I ask Solomenia how she got through that time, when so many others folded?"

“Honestly, the power of community was the most important thing, because reality, Flying Solo wasn’t just another store. Even though times were tough, designers stick together to make sure that we will still survive all of that, so 2021 was better than ever. It made us feel stronger as a group. Everyone was so ready to come back and we did everything that we could to open as early as possible. Funny story, the only way you can open earlier is if you were selling masks. We had a sewing machine downstairs and some fabric. so we actually started making masks. It was the only legal way for us to open. The smaller designers need to stick together to figure out a solution and because it was a shortage of masks it was quite a successful way for designers to make some money, so we did..."

Flying Solo were then able to open three weeks before everyone else could. And not only did they open, they continued doing NYFW.

"The Covid shows, in 2020, we did outdoor shows. September was fine because the weather was good, but then February came and everyone is going, ‘You’re going to skip the show right?’ And we said, 'There’s no way we’re skipping it..!' And everyone is saying, how are you going to do it, and on top of it, in NY they basically closed all the venues and said you can do stuff, but outdoors. So we’re like ok, so the only option is to do outdoors, so we’ll do outdoors. It was quite brave. At the beginning the designers were like, ‘Are you crazy? Are you actually going to do it?’ We’re like, what a lot of people do not see, is a lot of shows will not go live. It will actually be very few. By doing it, we’ll get a lot more attention to ourselves. And that year, it was only four shows that went live in that entire fashion week. Because it was so miserable everyone had to do it outdoors. So we did, and we got so much press. And people were just in awe that someone could pull it off. We just kind of said,

Fuck it..’ it’s us against the world anyway as a small designer, so it’s nothing new. It’s how we started.

And it's this kind of thinking that has made Flying Solo such a huge success. Fashion week was still officially on, but the amount of people that came even shocked Solomenia, "I didn’t expect so many people would come to support us. It was very cold that day, but our rooftop was full of people, they did not leave. We did four or five shows and they did not leave. And yes we were very cold by the end of it, I don’t even want to talk about the poor models, but even they were like, you know what, we need to do it, for the sake of everything. For the sake of designers, the industry, morale.. they all did it. And they said actually it was the funnest thing. Even the designers themselves, they didn’t even feel cold themselves, because they were just so excited that we were doing it. That we somehow against all odds that the show is happening and we’re here together. We kind of expected a few would show up, might as well but I said, no guys, we’re all going to do it, trust me. It’s going to happen. No matter how hard it’s going to be, our team will do it. And you should join and we had a really big show that time.. So we did it!"

A glimpse of a masked up, bundled up audience watching Flying Solo's show during Covid.

"I think what it taught us that no matter what, we’re going to survive. You can throw us the craziest thing and we’re still going to figure it out. We still do shows outside, only in sepetember, but when our designers ask us, what if it’s going to be bad weather? What if it rains? I say, we did it in snow, in cold, we did it outside in February. So trust us a little bit of rain, a lot of rain, it’s really not going to kill our show. We’ll figure it out."

It's amazing how Flying Solo, despite the growth has retained a community feel. Solomeina says, "Although they aren’t working in store anymore, we encourage them (designers) to come in, a lot of designers will do events here. We do a lot of community things, so we have what we call, The Flying Solo Club, so once a month or once every other month and we’ll get together and host a dinner here or we’ll go out altogether. And do a party in another place, or collaborate with another venue. So basically for the purpose of maintaining a community, because again not all of us live in NY anymore. This is the way we grow, we cannot possibly only choose designers from NY. That would be quite limiting, The essence should stay the same of Flying Solo, by designers for designer, designers supporting designers and we’re always collaborating instead of competing."

As for the shows? "The production becomes so much easier for them because you already know how everything needs to be done. So I think this show (NYFW 2025), was the best one yet. Definitely the smoothest one yet! And we’re very happy about it. We just keep growing."

As for Soloemeina's own brand, "I’m developing two lines. One which is this (the more ready to wear), and one is bespoke. Which is one of a kind with baroque pearls. There are only four left, the rest sold out. They’re for different clients. The RTW is more affordable price points, easier to wear everyday, the other are more for special occasions, although you can probably wear it for work!