meet susan.

I’ve spent a lifetime building brands.
Now I’m building one that’s mine.

I’m Susan Smith. Writer, creative strategist, and founder of AVILA.

After decades working across fashion, retail, and brand development, I created AVILA as a place where clarity and soul could live side by side. Where what we make reflects who we are. Where words, objects, and ideas come from lived experience rather than performance.

AVILA is not a pivot, more like an integration.

How I Got Here

For more than twenty years, I worked behind the scenes of brands you would recognize. I shaped product, positioning, and growth. I learned how things are built, how they are sustained, and what it costs to keep something alive over time.

But the most important work did not happen in meetings or market reports. It happened through change. Through endings. Through rebuilding my life and my work in ways that felt honest again.

AVILA grew out of that place.

What AVILA Holds

AVILA is a living body of work.

It includes my writing, including Mastering Gen X Life.
It includes objects made with intention, like the jewelry collections.
It includes reflection, clarity, and the quiet confidence that comes from choosing alignment.

Everything here is connected.
Nothing exists just to exist.

Who This Is For

AVILA is for women rewriting their stories.

For people who have built full lives and are ready to live them more truthfully.
For creatives, founders, and thinkers who want their work to feel like themselves again.
For anyone who knows something needs to shift, even if they cannot yet name what comes next.

The Work Beneath the Work

At its core, AVILA is about presence.

Showing up honestly.
Choosing clarity even when it asks something of you.
Letting go of what no longer fits.

This is not about reinvention as a performance.
It is about coming home to what is real.

If You’re Here

You do not need to arrive with a plan.

You might start with the writing.
You might find yourself drawn to an object.
You might simply stay and read quietly for a while.

However you arrive, this space is here to hold you.

Take your time here.
Start wherever you feel drawn.