What inspired you to start your business?

Seeing my mom raise me as a single parent but not get the respect she deserved in a corporate setting due to her English and being a woman has inspired me a lot. I never wanted to work for "the man." Being creative feeds my soul, and since I had successfully started another fashion business two years prior to starting Mirror Palais, I knew I was meant to be doing this.

How have social distancing and stay-at-home orders affected your business? How have your priorities shifted?

I had not been in New York, where my business is based, for over five months. I moved operations from NY to Cape Cod, where my boyfriend's family has a beachside cottage and we safely quarantined. In New York, I would personally go to my vendors for picking up and dropping off. Being in Cape Cod, the USPS and FedEx have been my lifelines, and we have continued to run although we have been extremely delayed in producing and delivering orders.

After some months of learning, I have moved back to NY and improved our operations for production and delivery. We now open orders for one week at a time and then close while we produce the pre-orders so that we do not overwhelm our team. Our only goal is to make our customers happy, and we have been able to do so successfully during this time thanks to our amazing team.