Fashion designers talk therapy, burnout, and mental health
If you work in fashion and are considering finding a therapist, this one's for you.
By Jorinde Croese
Fashion can be both a safe space and a pressure cooker. For some, the emotional toll of working in such a competitive, aesthetic-driven, and often unstable environment runs deep, in spite of the sense of belonging that fashion can cultivate compared with other industries.
To better understand how therapy intersects within the industry, we spoke with several designers and industry professionals about their mental health, their relationships to work, and how therapy has shaped their inner and outer lives. Their answers reflect a wide range of experiences, from burnout and creative block to anxiety and depression, and the complicated love affair many have with fashion itself.
Some have stayed in the industry, some left and returned, and others have used therapy as a mirror to reimagine what their practice could look like. This isn’t a story about solutions. It’s a snapshot of what it means to be a creative person trying to survive – and sometimes even heal – within a system that often forgets to ask how we’re doing.
“My therapist said: Institutions never question themselves. The problem is always the person who wants out. Maybe institutions should change so we don’t keep reproducing harm.”
Designer, Paris
What made you seek out therapy?
I was getting attracted to my darkest side, let’s say. I was pushing too much, thinking I didn’t deserve to be there – always working more and more, giving more and more to everyone, and losing myself. I went to therapy to get out of really dangerous relationships and environments, with boys as well as with work. My personal life was also becoming unstable with the sickness and death of loved ones, so it was really hard to manage everything.