As a student, fashion designer Sandra Garratt was given a project to design clothing that would go against her natural inclinations—clothes that she didn’t like. She came up with a line of economical, one-size-fits-all, modular clothing for women. Garratt moved on to a series of jobs in the fashion industry, but she kept thinking about those clothes she’d designed. They intrigued her enough that she eventually began producing them for a boutique in Dallas. Several businesspeople saw promise in Garratt’s clothes, and in 1986 they invested the money to help her start a nationwide chain of shops. The investment paid off. Within a few years, more than $100 million of Garratt’s clothes had been sold, and she had made millions in royalties. All because she put her natural inclinations aside and investigated something different.

Bits and Pieces, August, 1989