Selfish

A conversation with Faherty Co-founder Kerry Docherty about her memoir, Selfish.

By Eva Grunburg

“What do you care about?”

When Kerry Docherty was an undergraduate student at Yale University, she thought she had an answer to this question. But, after attending law school at Pepperdine University, co-founding the laid-back luxury lifestyle brand Faherty, and releasing her memoir, Selfish, she has found her true answer. “Unbridled creativity,” she says with a mischievous smile.

She didn’t come to this conclusion easily, though—it took years of mindfulness, healing, and selfishness.

Kerry Docherty

I meet Kerry at Godmothers Cafe in Summerland, a few hours before her Godmothers Gather event celebrating Selfish: Unlearning, Reclaiming & Telling the Truth, her provocative memoir about the decision to finally put herself first. I’m instantly entranced by her light, unapologetic demeanor.

As we sit down, a fellow patron says to Kerry, “I like your jacket!”

“Thanks,” says Kerry as she twirls, “Faherty brand!” 

She met her husband, Alex Faherty, on the first day of college during Spanish class, where he told her (in Spanish) that he wanted to start a clothing brand. She never would have imagined that she would marry him—let alone move in with him and his identical twin brother two weeks after the wedding to start the clothing brand he dreamed of. 

Kerry was a powerhouse at Faherty, spearheading everything from social media to human resources, acting as Chief Impact Officer, and leading the company to become a certified B Corp. But, while she says Faherty was her “first baby,” it wasn't her dream. “I wanted to use all of my skill sets and bring all of my gifts to the brand to make it as good as it could be… but you do see in the book me struggling with feeling burned out,” Kerry says.

Kerry joined the Brooklyn Writers Collective in 2020, an international creative community devoted to the power of personal narrative, and was inspired by the—sometimes brutal—honesty of her fellow writers. After jotting down all of her thoughts on paper over a few years, she had hundreds of pages of writing—and a dream of her own that just wouldn’t disappear. It became evident that writing a memoir was her dream—even though she had every reason to not write it.

“I often joke that there needs to be a support group for people who write memoirs—and there needs to be a different support group for people who are in memoirs that don't want to be in a memoir,” she laughs.

While she notes that it’s not a self-help book, Selfish explores what it means to have a self, a soul, and how we define ourselves while grappling with conflicting needs and desires. A push-and-pull that especially resonates with women and mothers. Kerry’s experience shows that when we tell the truth, it helps normalize what it means to be human and the pain inherent in the experience. “I believe telling the truth is an act of service, so the irony is the most selfish thing I could have done is write this book, and the most selfless thing I could have done is to write this book,” Kerry shares.

Kerry Docherty

Selfishly, I’m curious about Kerry’s favorite things to do while she’s in the Santa Barbara area. She shares that, having attended Pepperdine Law School, she loves driving up and down PCH, visiting Caffe Luxxe, and hiking in Ojai. Of course, she has to visit the Faherty boutique on Coast Village Road, which performs in the top ten of their 84 stores nationwide since opening last year.

When I see her again in the afternoon at Godmothers alongside Molly Rosen, the founder of the Brooklyn Writers Collective, and actress Jordana Brewster, Kerry and her unbridled creativity shine. “Women are having a zeitgeist of telling the truth, and we just need women who go there,” she explains. I see the nods of agreement from dozens of women in the audience around me, and I’m excited to see the world become a lot more selfish.