Fashion Designers Share Their Most Important Lessons Learned

There are many hardships you face when starting your own brand. Seven young designers share with The Business of Fashion their best advice on launching a label or a fashion business and the struggles they overcame to be where they are today. Designers interviewed include Alexander Wang, Phillip Lim, Christopher Kane, Nicholas Kirkwood, Thakoon Panichgul, Erdem Moralıoğlu, and Peter Pilotto. Excerpts are below but you can view the full article here. For further reading, check our editorial on the costs of starting a fashion brand.

“Having clarity. Knowing what you want. You don’t have to know how exactly to get there, but if you know exactly what you want, I think you figure out putting together the puzzle pieces and the layers. You figure out the journey, but you have to know what you want.”
— Alexander Wang

“Here’s the biggest lesson I’ve come to realise. Creativity is not sequestered to artistic ventures. You actually use the energy and the power of creativity to create business — to think about what you’re making. You try and communicate with what you create, right? So imagine if you didn’t just put it in a creative box — take that energy of creativity and create a business dialogue. Creativity creates business, but business affords creativity. That’s my simple philosophy: you have to have both.”
— Phillip Lim

“Don’t be something that you’re not. Do something else if you don’t want to be that big designer. It’s okay to dream, but realise what you’re good at and really focus on that. Like Louise Wilson said, there’s always someone better than you. It’s just human nature. So really work with what you have and prevail at what you’re good at, but don’t try to do everything because you’ll burn out.”
— Christopher Kane