Hats With Tude - Wear With Attitude.com

"It's a hat!" says Teraysa. All I saw was a bright florescent pink fluffy pom pom that for some reason reminded me of Fraggle Rock. Fast forward two months later and you have WearWithAttitude.com. Before I explain the site, let me tell you about how things came to be.


We all looked at what Teraysa had just pulled out of her bag and began to understand that it really was a hat. Just to give you a little background, I hadn't seen Teraysa in years and on the spur of the moment we decided to get together and have a drink. We all laughed about old times and how we all had changed since we last saw each other. Some of us had kids and others had traveled around the world. After a couple of beers, we began to act like kids and wear the crazy pink hat, it was fun.

During all this I was trying to work out the viability of the hat. My first thought was, isn't there a hat like this already out there? There are some, but not many and none specific to this kind of hat. Teraysa's a bit of an innovator and she came up with the hat after going to Burning Man. She told me that Burning man is a bizarre, hot/cold and dry crazy place. So to have fun at night and still party she figured that she needed to keep her head warm. Well I can attest that it does keep your head warm because I started to get hot flashes after ten minutes.

It's a cool, practical and trendy style of clothing that appeals to the flamboyant and extraverted kind of person. The only thing that was holding her back was awareness, she didn't have a website. That's where yours truly comes into the picture. Problem was, she didn't have any money to make it happen. So maybe I had a few drinks, or perhaps it's because I believe in the product. Either way I decided to do the site for free.

Teraysa has worked with everybody in the Ad business over the years and so when I came on board, things began to take motion. Jim McGuire a famous Charlotte photographer also gave his services for free, as did Jade a high end makeup artist and stylist. Our services were all gratis as were the models from the local talent agency. Trevor, a copywriter also donated his time. With all of us doing this for free, it was full steam ahead.

The idea behind the photos was that it's all about the hats. So initially I thought we should have the models wearing the hats in the nude. I thought the models could use this as a form of expressing their own form of individuality. This idea had some legs at first. The problem was that the models weren't being paid so it quickly went the way of most good ideas. So plan B was to do it so they looked nude. Once we decided upon this, it took us a little while to figure out the correct tone to shoot them. I think that the moment they realized that it was all about being expressive and animated they totally committed themselves to it. You have to realize that these models are really just a bunch of kids trying to get into the fashion/advertising world and to do something like this was really cool and good for their book.

Once we finished the shoot, it was all about getting the site up. Teraysa's husband, Wes, had already purchased a pre-built html website for this sort of thing. So the question was, could I work that code into my design with the photography? Well there were a couple bumps in the road but along the way I realized that Teraysa was looking for 80s pop fun. Once we came to this style I went to town. First figuring out the logo, then picking out the photos together. I'd say we were 90% in alignment, the other 10% we discussed and we were both open to hearing each other out. I guess it was weird because I wasn't being paid which made it an odd dynamic. So when she had a concern it was usually a real one and when I didn't like something I could freely voice my opinion. I have to say it was a very cool experience. I'd do it again but I think Nicole (my soon to be wife) would kill me.

With the design and the photography approved it was about coding. Let me tell you that I'm not a big fan of html code. It's annoying and very particular. Once I figured out how the whole thing got connected to the web and bow the backend worked it started to become fun. The cool thing abou this prebuilt site is that it already had a way for any average Joe to be able to make price changes or to remove products. What I had to do was design the generic look of the site. This took me a week in itself and became very frustrating. But I figured it out and started to make headway. A month later the site was up.

I have to say that I'm very proud of the site. I think it could use better functionality and more risque photography. If her business does well and knock on wood I hope it does, perhaps we will do all that other stuff. But for what it is I think it's pretty damn good. Since the site went live two weeks ago she's almost had 3,000 hits and taking orders daily. So please take a look and go to: WearWithAttitude.com.