While countless business owners struggled to keep established companies alive during the uncertain times of the pandemic, a few young women are bravely launching new concepts in the city, including Tennessee Jane.
SAINT MAIDE
The pandemic has put many people out of work and requires a fair amount of ingenuity to keep busy, and this statement rings true for Tennessee Jane. After she, too, lost her job amidst COVID-19, she found herself on a plane from San Francisco to Nashville, where she now calls home after years of experience in creative positions in fashion, makeup artistry, and marketing in New York City. One late evening during quarantine, Tennessee, or Tenny, for short, found herself struck with inspiration, and Saint Maide was born. She set the goal of starting her own business early on in life but didn’t expect it to happen quite yet. She has astutely dubbed 2020 as “the great accelerator” and notes this venture “took shape far sooner than [she] thought it would,” but despite the early-onset CEO title, Tenny aptly brought Saint Maide into the world.
Especially recently, in a time where everything seems fleeting, Tenny looks to dried floral arrangements, both elaborate and simple, as a source of perpetual beauty with a touch of nostalgia. In creating Saint Maide, she aims to bring the joy of being reminded of a floral arrangement you’d find at your parents’ or grandparents’ homes as a child to Nashville and across the US with her botanical offerings. Despite Saint Maide being new, working with flowers isn’t a new industry for Tenny. As a side hustle, while working and living in NYC, she began to dabble in floral design as a means of staying creative in her offtime. She knew from the start that she didn’t want to dive into the traditional route of only designing for grand events and felt drawn to the unique nature of dried bouquets and the (quite literally) lasting impression they have.
Tennessee Jane has been long inspired by the story of Saint Perpetua and wasn’t surprised when the name Saint Maide came to her late one evening during quarantine. She describes the name as “both divinely inspired and feminine, which speaks to both the inspiration and intention behind the brand.” With each arrangement, she brings new life into the flowers and botanicals that she incorporates, and Tenny could not have been more spot-on in finding one word that embodies Saint Maide: reincarnation.
