My Baba – interview

I meant to post this weeks ago when it was published but all kinds of things have got in the way of ANTW recently. Un-forgiveable really.

Anyway, I was honoured to be interviewed by the fabulous My Baba blog and so I thought I’d share my words of wisdom answers with my very own blog.

And here it is, you can click HERE to go to the original My Baba page too :

Lucky Seven Caps fashion label boss Mel Moss talks to My Baba this week about life as a successful working mother. Mel runs Lucky Seven Caps with her husband Jay Jay and they have two children, Cash (5 years) and Carter (3 years). The family live in the Cotswolds with one dog, two cats and six chickens. This doubles as Lucky Seven Caps’ HQ, where Jay Jay’s Dinersaurs are currently hibernating!

You own the awesome Lucky Seven Custom Made Caps, how did you come up with the concept?

Well, to be fair it was Jay Jay’s baby really and we met 10 years ago just as he’d made his first patch…ENCOM….and taken delivery of a load of trucker caps and captain’s crests. He’s an artist by trade and an ardent individual when it comes to what he wears. He hates anything with screaming logos and brash branding so Lucky Seven Caps started as the antithesis to the Von-Dutch explosion which was happening at the time.  He was inspired by the fictional logos from some of his best loved films and tv shows so ENCOM is from Tron and NOSTROMO is from Alien and so on and so on. In the early days there was nothing on the cap which said “Lucky Seven” which made it a nightmare to PR but great for those who wanted to wear a brand quietly.

You work together with JayJay, what’s it like working with your husband? 

We’re actually a pretty good team and although we have our own roles in the company, we make all the big decisions together. Jay Jay is head of all creative and so he’s in charge of designing the perfect caps and patches, which he does brilliantly. I look after all the PR and Marketing as well as special collaborations and partnerships, which are growing by the minute! We have a great team in the studio too who make sure that each and every custom made cap is of the highest quality. We’re not an off the shelf cap brand so each cap order is put together by hand, boxed and dispatched by a member of the L7 team. We take it all very seriously indeed!

You recently collaborated with Jamie Oliver. What was that like, working together? 

Jamie is an old friend of ours and someone we have the upmost respect and love for. We have been working with him and the team on patches for his various restaurants for a long time now and have just completed some fantastic caps for Jamie’s Italian in Moscow, Singapore, Istanbul and Canberra which has been great fun. Jamie loves caps as much as Jay Jay and was one of our very first supporters so it’s really cool to be able to work with him on Lucky Seven projects.  Jay Jay and Jamie also recently collaborated on The Diner, a pop-up Dinersaur restaurant in London. It’s full of Jay Jay’s artwork and sculptures and serves up the best burgers and hot dogs in town. Well worth a visit and it won’t be there forever.

Are you a huge foodie? What’s your favourite family recipe?

We absolutely love cooking and love recipe books! I’ve been stuck on my favourites, Polpo and Ottolenghi, for some time now and Jay Jay is addicted to the fabulous Pitt Cue book so we cook quite a range of things. In terms of a family recipe I think it would have to be Jay Jay’s Sunday American style pancakes with streaky wafer thin bacon and Maple Syrup. It’s become a bit of ritual in this house and the boys get thoroughly involved in both the making and the eating of it all.

What’s on top of your to-do list this week?

We’re working on a few new collaborations for Lucky Seven at the moment so this is probably top of the list this week.  Although, mending my childhood Paddington Bear is also up there as I’ve promised my 5 year old he can have him and at the moment he’s in a rather sorry state!

How has life changed, since having children?

It has changed absolutely for the better. I can’t really remember what it was like before but it must have been pretty boring! We have 2 boys, Cash (5) and Carter (3) and they make me laugh every single day and I think they’re completely brilliant. I’m constantly exhausted and forever chasing my tail but secretly I love every moment. We moved out of West London when Cash was 18 months old and now live in the Oxfordshire Cotswolds so I suppose that has been the biggest change. I adore it up here, wouldn’t want to live anywhere else right now. It just works for us as a family and for the businesses too, it provides lots of space to think.

Did you children inspire you to sell kids’ hats on your website?

Yes I suppose they did really. Jay Jay always wore a cap as a kid. There isn’t a photograph of him as a boy where he isn’t wearing a baseball cap. We started the kids caps when Cash was about 2 years old and began with the cloth Kid’s Army cap before going in to the Kid’s Deluxe Trucker which is ideal for kids to teens and beyond.  I have so many friends who struggled to find a hat their child would actually wear but I think if you’re able to sit with them and let them design their own online, it becomes all the more exciting and you can make it completely individual to them. We have a great and loyal young following for Lucky Seven Caps and the “Dinersaur” caps Jay Jay did when he opened The Diner with Jamie, are a particular hit with the boys!

What’s the one baby product you couldn’t have lived without? 

I think it would have to be Diprobase….a strange one maybe but both my boys suffer from excema and it is just the best thing in the world when it comes to keeping skin soft and happy.  We go through tons of the stuff.

Would you ever consider launching a children’s clothing line?

Yes, absolutely. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time and we have all kinds of plans for the kids divisions of both Lucky Seven Caps and Supersaurs. Watch this space…

How would you sum yourself up in one sentence?

Happy and hard working with a touch of maternal multi-tasking anxiety.