November 10, 2006, is a landmark day in my life. It is the last day on my job of 17 years at a Fortune 500 company and the launch of my web site, clothesforus.com. How do you move from one to the other, preferably without a meltdown? I will keep you informed on that one.

There comes a point in your life that you know everything has been one large, life-university teaching what you needed for the next step. And here we are together at the next step.

About seven years ago, a few random meetings with a former neighbor sparked the idea of fashion on the Internet. Not new, not revolution, but with something I know a lot about - plus-size fashion. I have been somewhere between a size 14 and 24 during my adult life, and have been frustrated by the lack of quality clothing available. So the germ of an idea, seven years of fertilizer, and here we are. Not just helping plus-size women find what they need, but many more hard to fit categories as well.

My mission is simple; provide stylish, classic clothes to an underserved community, and to provide a resource center for that community.

So what makes this different? Well for the size 2 gal, it won't be a size 8 made smaller, or the size 20 women, it won't be the size 8 made larger. We understand that a guy with a 60-inch waist is not really twice the size of a guy with a 30-inch waist. We are designing for your specific hard to fit need. But until we start next year with our clothing line, we can help you find what you need now.

So how did I get here? A mother who economically had to make her and my clothes. Sewing in 4-H. Entering clothing in the fair. My first job at a fabric store. An obsession with clothes and dressing well as a teenager. A mother who made me work and save to buy my own clothes, so that I understood the value of them. A mother who would let me design crazy things and then make them for me.

Then came the more traditional stuff. I put myself through college - computer science. Got married. Moved to Ohio to go to grad school - never got there. Bought a house. Divorced. Raised a niece for three years. Survived cancer. Bought a historic house and started my own business. Nothing spectacular, just the stuff that makes us all who we are.