By 2005 I found myself the co-owner of a large privately owned company. We had sixty-six retail stores nationwide, each one with its own crew of devoted Betsey girl employees. I finally found the sorority I envisioned belonging to in college. Chantal and I along with our core group of longtime employees were living in a pink kingdom that I had founded and we all built together.

By the time most companies get as large as we were they either sell out or go the franchise route. But we were not like most other companies. We couldn’t be bothered. In fact, we remained a true “mom and mom” organization even at that size. I still did all the designing. I still made all my sketches on my old light blue French farm table in my cramped, cluttered little office right in the heart of the showroom. Which is where I did all the fittings as well.

With my fashion fairy godfather, Stan Herman, in 1999

It was around this time that Chantal and I were approached by a private equity firm, a hedge fund out of Boston. They came to the showroom and gave us a presentation. The bottom line of which was, our company looked very sexy to them, and they were not talking about the clothes.

I don’t think either Chantal or I fully realized what we had built, because we were too busy building it. When you’re on the inside looking out, it’s hard to see the big picture. You tend to focus on what’s right in front of you at the moment. It took this outside company to put it into perspective for us.

They were the ones who opened our eyes to just how unusual our situation was. They told us they could help the company expand and be more successful. They wanted to invest in us, but Chantal and I would still own the majority share of the business.

This was an education for me. Chantal knew, but I didn’t realize, that these private equity firms even existed. On paper the offer sounded like a dream and just what we needed if we wanted to continue to grow, which they talked us into believing we did.

In reality, a few years earlier Chantal had confessed to me that she wasn’t sure how much longer she wanted to continue doing what she was doing. She told me that when we first started the company she thought we would have a good ten-year run, max. In her mind she had never really signed up for thirty years, which was the milestone we were fast approaching. Knowing that, I figured this opportunity sounded pretty sweet to her. I was wondering myself how much longer I could do my job—or if I even wanted to do it. Thirty years is a long time.

To make a long story short, we signed over almost half the company to the hedge fund with the understanding that they would take over the day-to-day running of things.

And they weren’t kidding. They immediately appeared with their lawyers and their accountants. One of their first orders of business was making us fire a number of key people who had been with the company practically from day one.

This hurt both Chantal and me more than you can possibly imagine. We had watched these girls grow up in the business and become successful women. Almost all of them were the main breadwinners in their families, and a lot of them had never had another job before coming to work for us, so we worried about what they were going to do. I know it sounds cliché, but they were like family to us. How do you fire your sister?

They replaced everyone they made us fire with people who may or may not have ever worked in fashion. It didn’t seem to matter to them if these people had the relevant experience. The new hires all brought with them their own ways of working, which went way against the grain of how we worked and had worked for years. You can only say “That’s not how we do it” so many times until it starts to sound silly. We were told to just let these people do their jobs, which would have been fine if they’d known how.

We had had no idea what working with partners would be like. It felt like a nightmare, and we had no say in the matter; they made sure we understood that. In fact, they were shamelessly up front about it. Now, remember, these were finance people we were dealing with. They knew nothing about the retail or fashion business. That said, they criticized the way we operated and didn’t understand our way of working. For instance, we almost always hired from within. Most of the girls started out working at one of the stores. If they showed potential or interest, when an opening came up at the showroom we would put them in the job. And they almost always figured out how to do it. We had some bad apples, of course, but we always weeded them out pretty quickly. As long as the girls understood the clothing and me, things usually went pretty smoothly.

But the general tone of the new crew was “We know better than you,” when they should have just left us alone to keep doing what we were doing.

Cracks were starting to appear in the walls of our pink palace.

There was so much time wasted on bullshit. For example, they had a board meeting once a month, and all of these new people spent most of their time preparing for it. Any time I asked one of them to do something or tried to involve one of them in the jobs at hand, they would tell me they were busy getting ready for the meeting. I couldn’t wrap my head around what they could have possibly been doing.

And worse than that, as a principal in the company, I had to sit through these boring day-long meetings. They were filled with PowerPoint presentations, projections, spreadsheets, and . . . I don’t know what else. The talk was constantly peppered with awful corporatespeak. Problems weren’t problems anymore; they were “challenges.” (And there were plenty of “challenges,” believe me.) There was also discussion about going after “low-hanging fruit,” whatever the hell that is! Chantal didn’t like these meetings any more than I did, but at least she understood what was going on inside the conference room.

To keep from losing my mind, I had a gadget that allowed me to summon an intern to bring me something—anything—to keep me engaged. It was a buzzer attached to my wrist with Velcro. Once, while I was nervously playing with my hair, which I have a tendency to do, the device somehow got stuck there, so that every time I reached for my hair, an intern would burst into the room. After about the tenth or fifteenth time that that happened, Chantal stood up and demanded to know what was going on. The poor intern had no idea what to say. That’s when I figured out that the buzzer was attached to my hair. For me, this revelation broke the heavy tension in the room.

I started laughing and tried to explain the situation to the suits in charge. They didn’t get it and just looked at me as if I had two heads. That’s what I had been reduced to by this point. I need to be surrounded by people who understand where I’m coming from, and just let me be me. These people would not.

At some point they brought in a real estate specialist who did seemingly endless research on potential new store locations. We had never invested that much time in figuring out where to expand. If we heard buzz about some hot new neighborhood in a city, Chantal and I would go there and spend an afternoon sitting in a café, scouting to see how many potential customers walked by. Easy peasy. It never took us more than an afternoon to make up our minds. Again, so much time-wasting and wheel-spinning over bullshit.

One day after work Chantal and I went back to Café Un Deux Trois for old times’ sake and had a long talk about our situation. We had to decide, for the sake of our sanity, to stop fighting against the tide and accept that it was no longer our job to do . . . whatever. We had let these people in. It was our fault, and we accepted full responsibility.

To this day, I honestly have very few regrets. Signing our souls over to the devil, which is how I think of the situation, remains at the top of a very short list.

Chantal had never gotten the same kind of satisfaction from running her end of the company as I did from running mine. She had been ready to walk right after we’d signed the contract. I had hoped she would stay but hadn’t pressured her at all. I wanted her to do what she needed to do. I was over the moon when she agreed to remain on for a while.

As for me, I was conflicted. By then I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. I felt beaten down and I was quickly losing my oomph. A big part of me had wanted to walk away. But a bigger part couldn’t imagine not designing every day. So I just put my blinders on and concentrated on the work. That had always been my MO and it had always worked. But this was different: for the first time that I could remember, my work was being judged by people I didn’t respect, and that made me feel very insecure. They specifically questioned why we didn’t read trend reports. We didn’t do this because my clothing wasn’t “trendy”; it was what it was.

I don’t like feeling insecure and I don’t like questioning myself; I don’t think many people do.

Fast forward a couple of years. Correction, a couple of unsuccessful years.

It was now 2007, and the recession was hitting. Our stores, which had always had their ups and downs, were definitely struggling. Sales started to level off, and then slow down, and eventually we started losing money. Added to that, other companies started ripping us off and producing similar product at greatly reduced prices. We hadn’t really seen that happen before. Across the board, business was in the toilet.

Chantal ultimately managed to hold out for two years, but by then she had had it. She went on vacation and just never came back to work. She called me while she was away, and I relayed the message to the powers that be. They begged me to get her to stay, but I wouldn’t. I knew she was through. When she got back from her vacation, we got together, and there were tears, of course, but I was happy for her and even a little envious.

I knew that eventually the crash would have to come, and when it did, it hit me like a ton of bricks. The suits came to me and informed me in no uncertain terms that they planned to file for bankruptcy and close all of my stores. I couldn’t even bring myself to think of how many of my pink ladies would be out of a job.

To make matters even worse, they told me that I was contractually forbidden to tell anyone. I just had to smile my way through the next six months. I felt alone and scared. One thing that would console me was a line I remembered from the movie Dangerous Liaisons. At some point in the film John Malkovich says, “It’s out of my control.” And my own situation was completely out of my control. This line of thinking may have been a way to square things with myself, but it didn’t make being untruthful by not being able to be forthcoming any less painful.

When the switch was finally thrown, we were given only one day’s notice to inform everyone in the company before the formal announcement was made.

I dealt with it the only way I knew how. I threw a champagne and cupcake party to break the horrible news to the company. I hoped, maybe naïvely, that the sweets and the bubbly might in a small way soften the blow. Maybe it wasn’t the best way to handle the situation, but I just had to do something.

There was surprise but not shock. Everyone knew something was brewing. People cried. People were angry. Some walked out. But most stayed and commiserated.

And that was that.

Sad but true

Enter Steve Madden

In August of 2010, just in time for my birthday, Steve Madden swooped in like Superman and purchased my brand. Steve and I had known each other for years from working in the Garment District. We’d always had a fun, flirty, sparring kind of relationship. I liked what he did, and he told me he had always admired what I did.

If he hadn’t stepped in, the Betsey Johnson label would have evaporated into thin air. Steve was going to keep it alive with me as creative director.

Me and the Mad Man himself

I would work with different licensees and their designers on a whole range of products, which included dresses, activewear, shoes, jewelry, fragrance, bedding, cosmetics, lingerie, sleepwear, hosiery, eyewear, and even luggage. It reminded me of when I was designing so many different kinds of products during my freelance years between Alley Cat and launching my own company.

For the first time, however, I would not be exclusively responsible for designing the product, and this would be a real learning curve. But I was on board and so determined to keep the brand alive.

To be honest, the results, in my opinion, haven’t always been successful, but when that happens, the blinders go on once again and I deal with it.

Television

Oddly enough, right in the middle of all of the chaos and insanity of losing control of my company, television came knocking.

It was actually Lulu who was contacted by a producer who was interested in the two of us starring in our own reality TV show. It sounded like fun, I mean, what could go wrong? Lulu was going through some personal issues of her own, and we decided that this might actually be a good distraction for both of us.

We couldn’t have been more wrong. Practically from episode one of what they called XOX Betsey Johnson, the producers of the show kept trying to pit us against each other. We cringingly made it through six episodes and were so glad when it was over.

I have a rule that I have stuck to for most of my life: never say no to an opportunity. So when the people from Dancing with the Stars tapped me to be a guest, I immediately said yes. I had never seen the show, so they sent me some tapes. I watched them and thought, Well, how hard can that be? I can dance. I’ve been dancing my whole life.

Then they told me we would be filming in Los Angeles for six weeks. The thought of being in LA for that long did not thrill me. I’ve never really enjoyed spending time there. Whenever I had to open a store or visit one of my stores in the area, I always made it a bubbly Betsey girl party. Being the quintessential New York girl, everything about Southern California was just too alien to me, not to mention my fear of earthquakes. But it would be great exposure for the brand, which was important to me, so I would just have to grin and bear it.

When I arrived in LA, I hit the ground running, and I quickly found out how grueling it was going to be. I mean, I have always been a very active person and had boundless energy, but nothing could have prepared me for the grueling rehearsal schedule. The daily routine was up at six; at the studio by eight; rehearse, rehearse, rehearse all day, as well as doing interviews and other press; and finally back home to the apartment they had rented for me by around eight each night and crash. It was brutal, but after the first few days I actually began to love it.

We rehearsed Tuesday through Friday, had the weekends off, and taped the show on Monday.

I was so nervous that I flew Lulu out every weekend to spend time with me. I needed her love, reassurance, grounding, and handholding.

After a few weeks, and with Lulu’s help (she loved it out there), I surprised myself by beginning to get a real feel for California. I mean, it’s just a beautiful place. You can’t beat the weather, and most people I came into contact with were extremely nice. And, nerves aside, or maybe because of them, my dancing was getting better and better.

As far as my actual performances on the show were concerned, I managed to last three rounds before I was booted off. I really bungled the final routine, which was a swing dance. What happened was, I lost my place and timing; then I had a wardrobe malfunction—a pink feather boa I reached for got caught on the clothing rack—so I decided I would just end with one of my cartwheels and a split. The audience went crazy. They loved it.

The producers, however, did not. You’re supposed to soldier through the routine and do your best, not just wing it. I was fine with losing and was more than ready to go back home. Oddly enough, because of the show’s popularity, I ended up on the covers of all the weekly magazines and gained a whole new fan base that knew me as “that lady on Dancing with the Stars.” If nothing else DWTS made me a big name in grocery stores.

Malibu Betsey

Not long after DWTS Lulu laid a bombshell on me: she and her two kids were moving to California. That’s right, I have two granddaughters. Let me back up a bit.

Lulu got married in 2006 and within a year gave me my first grandkid. I was thrilled when she told me that she was pregnant. The thought of having a little baby to indulge and dress up thrilled me. I couldn’t wait to start spoiling this little girl. I say “girl” because just as in my case, it had never once occurred to me that Lulu would have a boy . . . and she didn’t. Little Layla came into the world in 2007 and was followed two years later by Ella. Two years apart, just like me and Sally and Bobby.

These girls are my pride and joy. Layla is absolutely her mother’s daughter. She’s ladylike and composed. Ella is so much like me—creative, rambunctious, and outspoken.

When Lulu told me about the move, I was crushed. The thought of living three thousand miles away from my family was not even an option. As I wrapped my head around what seemed like the unthinkable possibility of leaving New York, I have to say, it didn’t bother me as much as it would have only a few years earlier. And the more I considered relocating, the more I liked the idea. After pondering it for a long while, I realized that there was basically nothing tying me to the city anymore. Most of my friends had moved away. Chantal was spending less and less time there. The work I was doing for Steve Madden could be done anywhere. The extreme weather bothered me more and more. A particularly nasty New York winter sealed the deal for me.

Without giving it much more thought, I sold my house in East Hampton and then my apartment on the Upper East Side, tied up any loose ends, got on a plane, and moved out to what to me had previously been the dreaded West Coast!

Lulu and the girls settled in Malibu. The plan was for her to find a property to buy that had room for Grandma Betsey—ideally I pictured living in a sweet little cottage on the grounds. While she was looking, she rented a big house, and I lived in the house/garage in the backyard. It was small but cozy.

I thought the situation was fine. Lulu had other ideas. After about a month of this arrangement, she came to me in tears. She thought having me in the backyard was just too close quarters. I think in some way her idea to move out west was a way to gain some independence. God knows, we’d never been more than shouting distance from each other. In New York, I lived in an apartment right upstairs from the apartment I gave her as a wedding gift.

After a long, emotional discussion Lulu agreed to help me find a place of my own. I was sad that she felt this way, but I wanted her to be happy, and just as with the move out west, I soon began to like the idea of truly being on my own. Later in the week Lulu and I went house hunting, and I bought the first place I looked at. It was a smallish (but plenty big for me) mobile home. I liked the idea of telling people that I was going to be living in a trailer park.

I moved all my stuff out of storage, painted the exterior of the place hot pink, moved in, set about redoing the layout of the rooms, and most important, decorating!, which has always been my favorite thing to do.

And that’s where I am today. Lulu is building the house of her dreams right up the hill from me. We are definitely living separately, but she and the kids are just a golf cart ride away, and the situation works out perfectly for all of us.