How to start a fashion label: Things I wish I knew before launching one pt.1
For all the non-nepo babies of the world
This section is dedicated to my younger self and all the clones of my younger self out there in the world. Through the outpour of my salad brain, here you’ll have a summed up version of all of the things I wish I came upon on the internet before I launched Bastet Noir. Think of it as your guide on how to build a sustainable and profitable fashion business if you’re not a nepo baby.
![Black shirt maxi dress Black shirt maxi dress](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_5760,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb020c1f8-48f6-495c-a909-e88a1f68b065.heic)
Alrighty, let's start with the first post of what hopefully becomes a series of tips and tricks for all of you young aspiring fashion designers out there who want to launch a fashion label or at the very least dabble their feet into the murky waters of this industry.
Branding - That Thing That Comes First
I oftentimes get asked, what comes first and to be honest this question is one that’s been haunting me for quite a long period of time. It’s kind of like the chicken or the egg type of situation, if you know what I mean. While it’s good to have a structure obviously, oftentimes when you’re a solo designer you’ll find yourself dividing your attention between mutiple different tasks and this is one of the things you need to prepare for, as most of the time the things you’ll find yourself doing will not be the things you love. This is not to discourage you in anyway, but it’s just to prepare you to be aware, cause I sure as hell wasn’t.
Good, now that you’re aware of that, what’s next? Well, if I had to pick I would say it should start with your style, what you dig and what you know. It’s going to be messy at the beginning, as not everyone of us finds themselves to fit into one particular category. Take me for instance. I’ve always considered myself as someone who knows what she wants in certain areas of life, but style wise I like to experiment a lot. I love Boho mixed with cowboy but I also like strong architectural lines, masculine shapes and edgy rock stuff mixed with romantic frilly shapes. It’s a messy brain I have, I’m telling you.
What I learnt though overtime is that rather then following the money path which took me to put bridesmaid dresses at the front and centar of my label, I should have started working on the branding first and built collections around the style of my target customer. For most of you this might be obvious but for a self taught designer, I guess this was the thing that I could have avoided and saved me some precious time. So what’s the moral of this story? Always start with the branding first.
While talking about branding, the thing that comes first to mind is moodboards. I started building these on Pinterest, because that’s what was available at the time. However, as much as I loveeeee Pinterest, while doing the rebranding at the beginning of this year, I got hooked on Mila Note. It’s a very practical tool to have as it has a mix of different segments spread between notes, lists of things to do, images, sketches and you can even draw on it. Very cool tool. Below I’m sharing a screenshot of our current branding strategy.
Keep in mind that this should be a work in progress document and you should always make small changes to it to improve, but your brand personality and core values are among the things that should always stay the same.
Designing - The Thing That Comes Second
After this is done, you can move on to the next thing, which is actually designing, what I’m assuming would be your favorite thing to do as a creative.
There’s a lot of things that go into the design process that you should consider, although I think that those who are already educated designers know all this, so I’ll skip the lecture for now. I’ll just add this, while designing, keep in mind the categories. My suggestion here would be to start with one and than expand later on. You don’t want to spread yourself too thin. Even established designers like Jacquemus and labels such as Ganni, all started with one product and one category. It’s much easier to get the quality and fit right when you’re working with one category instead of 5. For us that was dresses.
For the better part of 7 years, I used blank pieces of paper to sketch the designs. These past 2 years though I’m using Remarkable. While I like this product as it gives me the feel of a paper, if you have the means to get an iPad I would suggest using that instead, since there are many apps you could use that help make the process of designing easier and better. I won’t be sharing any since I’m currently not using any, but when this changes, I’ll be sure to make another post on which are worth your while.
We’re currently doing everything by hand, including the patterns and if you’re a self taught designer like me, I suggest you do the same. There’s beauty that comes with learning by doing and since fashion is an industry still made by humans, it will be beneficial for you to learn the basics through what I call a rudimentary process before you move to digitalisation.
Production - The Thing That Comes Third
Now being the nut case that I am, I set myself up for failure straight from the very beginning by going against the currents and introducing a made to measure concept rather than producing in bulk.
There were two reasons why I did this. It all started with a lack of budget and a very strong passion to make changes in an industry which is one of the biggest polluters out there. I didn’t realize just how tough it would be to actually change people’s percepation of it.
If there’s one baffling thing to me it’s how everyone’s talking about making changes to the way we consume and produce fashion, yet no one wants to address this issue straight to its roots, aka the production model. Not one person I’ve spoken to thinks this is a scalable model, yet here we are doing it at a scale at the speed of well I would dare to say fast fashion.
I guess what I’m trying to say is this: If you really want to make changes you should adopt this model too. It’s not overproducing, keeps you within budget, as well as it gives you a safety net in case nothing sells so you’re able to reuse the fabrics for something else. No inventory, no landfill. It’s as simple as that. Not to mention it saves you a lot of headaches that come with returns and refunds. It’s a model that’s not only useful for the environment, but it also provides you with a lot of autonomy for you as a designer as well, especially during that market-fit period.
While we’re working with a community of women single parents in-house, you can always explore options such as sustainable sourcing platforms like Manufy, Lisd Manufactory and I recently came upon this platform Resonance which is promising to help emerging brands produce at a scale with no minimum inventory whatsoever. We haven’t used them yet, but I like their concept, so I thought I’d share. If anyone has, please feel free to share your experiences.
Well folks, that’s that for my first post. A second part of this piece is coming next Sunday. Please comment down bellow on what you’d like to see more of and what would be helpful to know for you as a fashion designer.
I know time these days is a precious currency, so thank your reading.
Hasta la vista lovelies from my Salad Brain.
Well done! So many truth bombs in this article - one product, one category - changing people’s perceptions and understanding production etc I look forward to reading more! xC