N.S. nursing student spends time between classes creating destination-inspired sweaters for new business

A nursing student at Dalhousie University in Halifax is spending her spare time between classes and studying creating destination-inspired sweatshirts for her business "Celestial City."

Hannah Fougere is originally from Cape Breton but moved to Halifax for university.

It was in January 2021 when she started juggling school and a small business.

"I basically began designing sweatshirts relating around Canadian provinces, specifically Atlantic Canada designs," says Fougere.

(SOURCE: Instagram/ celestialcity.clo)

"When I started off with my Nova Scotia design, my first one, I had a lot of requests, so then I expanded to the rest of the Atlantic Canada provinces."

Fougere designs, dyes and embroiders her sweatshirts all in her Halifax apartment. She says her designs are inspired off what her Instagram followers are interested in seeing.

"So, I put out some polls to see what they're interested in and then I digitize designs from there," she says.

Fougere says her most popular sweatshirt is likely her Nova Scotia design with an embroidered deer that reads, "It's the Wind That Gets Ya."

Along with polls on designs, Fougere also asks her followers for popular sayings to use as well.

"That's something that I wanted to do. Have fun sayings on Atlantic Canada because I think Atlantic Canada has some really unique sayings," says Fougere.

(SOURCE: celestialcityclo.com)

In order to manage her new business and studies, everything Fougere sells is made-to-order. Orders can be made once a month on her website.

"Just because when I am in school I need to have control over how many I make," she says. "So, I take pre-orders. I set a time and a day where people can log onto my website and make orders." 

Fougere says, although most of her orders are within Atlantic Canada, she has sent some as far as England.

"I'm slowly getting across Canada because I've put out some designs for other provinces and territories," Fougere says.

(SOURCE: Instagram/ celestialcity.clo)

According to Fougere, she's grown a skill at working, while keeping up on schoolwork at the same time.

"The good thing about this is, where I do work from home and I'm in school, I'm able to write papers while I'm embroidering and study as well," she says. "I have big headphones I put on to block out the noise of the machines so I can comfortably study for school." 

(SOURCE: Instagram/ celestialcity.clo)

As far as when Fougere graduates and is working fulltime, she plans to keep up with her designs.

"I still plan on continuing this while I'm working as a registered nurse," she says. "I'd like to get a machine to upgrade to do hats as well, and I plan on actually hiring my mom and my aunt to maximize my capacity even more so I can take more orders."