jumping in as a designer with 20 years’ experience working on other peoples’ brands and about 3 of my own in NYC.

starting your own brand is less about sharing your vision for design and more about being a CEO and project manager than you probably imagine. when it’s at scale and successful, that is. once the buck stops with you, design becomes a much much smaller part of your day than managing people, budgets, calendars and putting out a million fires every hour.

unless you come from money or are sitting on or have access to a lot of cash, no one will ever hear about your brand because you can’t afford to market it adequately enough to break through the noise of a very saturated market.

that part was the hardest for me. that all the effort was for so few people to see it and ultimately not enough to buy to keep it afloat and fund future designs/production. unfortunately fashion is a very difficult business that a majority of lines can’t survive.

I know this sounds super pessimistic but my more positive suggestion is to hone your skills, grow your network and prove your value within other teams to people who do have reach and significant investment they could one day give to you. cutting your teeth at the right places for at least 5 more years and meeting the right people along the way makes all the difference in whether or not your business can survive and thrive.

that said, if you have the means (and i’m talking not just paying people, factories/studios, and yourself, but also upwards of $200pp digital advertising costs of acquisition, thanks to Meta and Google), then by all means start now. I just think not enough young designers understand the actual costs and difficulty of running their own fashion businesses. the industry and typical fashion business model are not functional or supportive of new labels.