Behind the Process: Fierce & Sweet Kids Apparel

A look at what actually happens before the finished thing you see.

The Starting Point

Every design starts with a question I can't shake: what if this animal got to be fierce and unmistakably kind at the same time, instead of one or the other? For the lion collection, that meant asking what a "Roar-alty" lion looks like when the roar and the warmth live in the same face. For the snake line, it meant leaning into "Hugs and Hisses" on purpose — a snake that's genuinely fierce but framed in soft, floral linework, so a kid can love the bite and the gentleness of it at once. I sketch that tension out before I ever touch a finished design.

The Middle Mess

The design process is not magic. It's dozens of rounds of drafting, tweaking, and rejecting images that slip back into the old boxes I'm trying to break. A lion that reads as too soft loses the "fierce" half. A snake rendered too cute loses the "sweet" half's edge. Most drafts get scrapped because they solve only one side of the equation instead of holding both at once. The ones that survive are the ones where a kid could point at the shirt and say "that's brave" and "that's kind" in the same breath, without contradiction.

What It Becomes

What makes it through that process is a shirt, onesie, or hoodie that lets a kid be fierce and sweet at the same time — no either/or required. It's a small thing, but it's the thing my granddaughter deserves, and every kid who wears one after her.

Shop the Collection

See the finished work and how it holds up in person → fierceandsweet.com

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