THE STORY
My name is Kenlie Cerull. I am the creator of CASH ONLY, and am overwhelmed with excitement that you have decided to learn more about this brand.
At the age of four I sat in my room surrounded by scraps of fabric and a stapler. Referencing the clothes on my barbies and my sketches, I stapled together a little clothing collection. I had no sense of sizing or construction, but it wouldn’t stop me. My stapled designs did not make it out of my little room in Appleton, Wisconsin; but I was determined that one day they would.
My favorite time of the year has always been back-to-school shopping. I specifically remember my 5th grade shopping trip. I picked out a neon blue t-shirt which had an oversized graphic of Cookie Monster’s face in the middle. This shirt was gaudy and unique, which is why I loved it. To this day my family cries of laughter over my obsession with the shirt as well as many of my other “fashionable” choices. Speaking for my parents, they wanted to burn that shirt every time I wore it. But their willingness to let me dress as I wanted allowed a new voice to develop within me. Unknowingly I expressed my innermost self through what I wore, and my bold expression through style continued to evolve in bright and unique formats.
“What makes your heart tick?” was a question my mom asked at every family dinner. Through these table talks I had a platform to speak freely about my love for art and fashion; little did I know that these conversations became powerful forms of manifestation for everyone at the table. Our family roared with passion and dreams of exponential light.
The passion and love at our dinner table grew dark in 2015. My mom was diagnosed with late-stage Lyme disease and shortly thereafter it was determined that my brother and I were as well. My family was suffering in silence for years, to the point that we weren’t even recognizing it. My once bright, awe inspiring mother could not leave her bedroom. My brother could barely make it to school. And I simply shut down, feeling nothing but darkness every day. A dark cloud hung over our heads with no sign of cure in sight, and if we were all able to make it to a family dinner, we no longer had the capacity to think about “what made our hearts tick.” My bright, crazy wardrobe turned black, and I had lost all passion for design.
Leading up to my freshman year of college, my mom and I went back-to-school shopping for the first time since the diagnosis. I selected garments with color and flare, excited for my future life in Boulder, Colorado after years of treatment and loss. My mom began to cry as I tried the garments on. She explained that the dark cloud I kept safe above my head was lifted. For my outward expression of happiness was coming back.
We can not always be happy, every person is dealing with their own demons; but what we can do is work from the outside in. CASH ONLY is an ode to the brightness and happiness we all hold, but are not always experiencing. I never realized how much my style expressed my inner self until I went through such an age of darkness, and I want to change that. It is impossible to be perfectly happy every second of our lives, but it is possible to work through these moments from the outside in. Color is the premise of this company, a symbol of allowing the brightness of our clothing to shine in just as much as it shines out. We have the power to bring light in, and I believe that clothing is a powerful way of doing so.
Creating CASH ONLY has made my heart tick more than ever before, and I hope that it inspires you to find something that makes your heart tick as well.
XO,
KRC
