How to start a fashion label: Branding 101
Where to start when launching a fashion label
Welcome to another epizode of the “Things I wish I knew before launching a clothing label”. This time I’ll be covering branding for fashion businesses.
To many, branding feels like a very easy process. This is why most businesses leave this out to the very end. I, however am a firm believer that branding should always come first, as it dictates every following step you’ll take. From what you create in terms of design, to how and whom you market the label to, all the way to setting up the pricing strategy, if done right, branding can be detrimental to the survival of any business, not just a fashion related one.
It’s a common belief that branding is just the visual identity of a label. I’m here to debunk this myth and tell you, that branding is so much more complex than that. Apart from the visual identity, it also includes verbal identity, the story and messaging you’ll develop around it, the values and actions you’ll take and what emotions you’ll convey, as well as the promise you make to your customers. The whole process around branding feels so much easier said than done honestly and oftentimes many fashion designers or if you’re like me a fashion entrepreneur don’t know where to start. So here I’ll be sharing actionable steps on how to get your fashion branding right and nail the whole brand identity before you delve into designing, marketing and selling.
The key is coherence
It’s a concept often used in branding and although it sounds very simple, the fact remains that coherence is very difficult to achieve, especially if your brain is all over the place, like mine is.
However, with time I have learnt that every successful thing you do comes down to one thing and one thing only and that’s your organizational skillset, meaning the right arrangements of your work into categories. Knowing this is half the battle won.
So here’s how I broke down the complexity of branding into several segments and lined up tasks to ensure better focus and avoid getting distracted whenever I see a design I like that doesn't really appeal to our target customer. I know I would have find this very helpful to know when I was starting out.
1. Defining Values
The key to any successful and strong brand is the values of your label
Values create connection and serve as a guide for every action you’ll take and any decision you’ll make, from choosing the appropriate partnerships all the way down to how you handle all the Karens of this world.
When we were doing the rebranding for Bastet Noir, this is what that looked like. I took a piece of paper and wrote down 3 core values I wanted the label to convey (high quality, social responsibility and sustainability). These are the three aspects which resonated the most with me which I believed were especially important to our customers. Broken down into steps, they’ll look something like this:
Step 1 - write down your core values
Step 2 - pick 3 main values
Step 3 - put them into the moodboard
These will than dictate everything you do, from the design, all the way to the verbal identity of your fashion label.
2. Creating a style concept
Style concept is extremely important when crafting your brand identity. Its main components are personality type, main emotion and promise.
Brand personality
There are 12 main personalities depending on which human desire you want to appeal to. What you’ll end up designing and how you’ll communicate with your customer will ultimately be determined by the core personality you choose.
For me it was especially hard differentiating between the story and the brand personality. Our story is very much geared towards the caregiver personality. It’s the reason why I founded this brand in the first place to help single moms gain financial freedom. However the designs we’re making are not alligned with this type of consumer. We are aiming for sexy with a tiny bit of edge, power vibes, sophistication and timeless elegance. So how do you communicate that without your brand looking schizophrenic? It’s so hard that up until a few months ago it seemed like an impossible task. I was really struggling with this to be honest. After almost 4 months on going back and forth, I finally landed on 2 personalities, The Lover and The Ruler.
Down below you’ll find a breakdown of all of the other 12 brand archetypes explained in more detail and what emotions they’re invoking specifically.
THE FREEDOM DRIVEN
THE EGO DRIVEN
THE SOCIAL DRIVEN
THE ORDER DRIVEN
Main Emotion
The main emotion refers to how you want to make people feel and this for us was pretty consistent from the start. My aim was always delight. This emotion should be reflected throughout your entire visual identity.
If you’re doing your branding now, it’s helpful to look at this list of common emotions, pick one and write it out in your moodboard.
happiness
trust
calm
clarity
fun
motivation
delight
surprise
The Promise
The verbal identity of the brand is equally important as the visual . The tone of voice you’ll be using to get your message across and articulate your values matters tremendously when trying to capture the minds of your customers.
For us that promise we want to make is that we’ll always aim to deliver high quality clothing made with luxury craftsmanship techniques at affordable prices. This promise is reflected throughout our entire communication strategy particularly across social media. We document and showcase the entire production process explaining in great detail the production techniques we use, educating our customers about the great deal of special care and attention that goes into every single detail.
Here’s a list of promises to choose from when building your fashion brand. Pick one and use that to thread your unique brand message. Write this down in the moodboard as well
Beauty
Knowledge
Excelence
Family
Love
Happiness
Innovation
Freedom
Health
Safety
Solidarity
Creating this style concept will help you tremendously in creating the design signature for your fashion label. Great, now that we’ve laid the foundations of your fashion brand, let’s delve deeper into crafting the visual and verbal identity.
3. Creating the visual identity
Let’s get to the fun stuff, shall we? Creating the visual identity of the label to me was the most fun part, as it implies creating moodboard where you put in all of the things you like and find inspiring, from shapes, to colors, to photos of ideal client, similar products you love, textures, websites and even a list of similar brands to yours. The idea is to extract a common thread of all the things you love.
When crafting the design signature it’s important to know two things. The shapes you’d want to use which goes back to the feeling you’d want your customers to feel and picking the right color palette. Now, if you’re working with deadstock fabrics, finding the right shade could be a mission impossible, however it’s important to have this written down prior to starting the label, as it will help you stay consistent.
Picking Shapes
Shapes are more complex than you might think. You know how whenever you see a label with a strong identity, it always feels like it has something so unique you can almost always tell who designed the piece. Creating this strong visual identity starts with picking out the shape first. If you’re an educated fashion designer than you’ll probably know this well, but for me this was all new and since I find the psychology behind it fascinating, I think it’s worth sharing here.
Shapes have an important impact on people’s feelings and behaviour and they help you reinforce your brand message through design.
In a nutshell, squares and rectangles are formed by straight lines and right angles that give viewers a sense of reliability and security and these attributes make people feel safe and contained. Triangles, depending on their positioning can mean different things, but in general, these shapes are connected to movement, balance, risk and stability and can make a design appear more edgy. Circles, ovals and elipses are mostly used when you like to extract more feminine vibes, as these shapes are associated with softness. If you want to know more about the psychology on different shapes, check out this article.
Apart from being used to generate the basic design, shapes will also be used in creating the typography for your label, as well as any graphics you’ll be using and sometimes even when creating the photography as well. So pick a shape and add this to your moodboard as well.
Colors
Different colors have different meanings, so when working on your color palette it’s important to take this into consideration prior to designing. For instance red is associated with energy, war, danger, strength, power, determination as well as passion, desire, and love. We often use this color in a variety of shades across our collections.
While we do have a spectrum of colors we use, shades for us at Bastet Noir are highly influenced by season.
For our winter collections we use burgundy, terracotta (burnt) orange, olive, black, dark shades of grey, teal, dark blue, sage green, creamy cappucino brown, dark chocolate brown and wintery white.
For our summer collections we opt for lighter colors like blush pink, creamy white, white and pastel shades.
As for the colors we use on our website and across our communication strategy, I’m attaching a screenshot. One important thing to mention here is to use precise hec codes when picking colors. It will come in handy to unify shades across your entire brand.
You can find more details about this at The Color Psychology.
4. Creating the verbal identity
The verbal identity is the common language used between you and your customers. Every single text and message you’ll use, be it on social media, across newsletters or elsewhere is considered as the brand’s verbal identity. From how you name the products, to the tone of voice you use to articulate your message, your unique story all the way to the call to action, all of it is part of the verbal identity.
Here you’ll need to work on crafting copy that’s engaging for your target consumer. I’m sure you’re aware just how powerful words can be in every situation and building a fashion label is no exception.
We have an entire board on Trello, filled with potential keywords and phrases we could use that resonate best with our customers. Usually for this it’s helpful to hire a copyrighter if you’re not a wordsmith yourself. Hey, you can’t excell at everything. However if you’re on a budget, like I was in the first few years, creating a word document or Trello list with keywords and phrases used by your favorite brands can also do the trick, as long as you rework them to reflect your label’s story. However, if you have a little budget and you’re tight on time, you can always hire a professional to do this for you.
I’ve prepared a branding template tailored specifically for fashion designers, so if you’d like one, please comment down below and I’ll send it over.
Well, I think it’s finally time to finish this article, wouldn’t you agree? I hope this is usefull for all of you young fashion entrepreneurs out there. Another part of this piece is coming out next Sunday. Until then, because sharing is caring, if you know someone who is an independent fashion designer and will find this helpful please share it.
I know time these days is a precious currency, so thank your reading.
Hasta la vista lovelies from my Salad Brain.