In-house designers discuss the price of ambition
What fashion really demands from the people who keep it running.
Behind-the-scenes content is increasingly popular in fashion, communicating the PR-approved musings of this week’s creative director (gone the next). But what we really need is honest information about the inner workings of the top brands and conglomerates. We decided it was time to ask the experts who are never asked.
1 Granary has interviewed in-house designers at the height of their careers – the stalwarts who have been researching, conceptualising, designing, and producing every collection for the past three decades. Over the next few weeks, we will release a series of newsletters devoted to a different thematic area that emerged from our conversations: money, power dynamics, motherhood, equality, ageism and much more.
Following our conversations about salaries, internal politics, ageing in fashion, and power dynamics, in this edition we’ll be discussing the price of ambition. How much to sacrifice to make it as a designer in the industry?
If I step back and look at fashion, I see only people with no life. It’s an intense job and it always takes more than the time you sign for in your contract. To perform properly, you need to give so much of yourself, so many parts you might not get paid for. If you don’t learn to say no, to set your boundaries, you go crazy. In my studio right now, I have four people on burnout. With time I had to learn to say no and work as fast as possible. And to stop there, to leave when my tasks are done. Otherwise, it’s a wheel that doesn’t stop. Seasons overlap and there is no break. If you don’t take a break, you don’t have new ideas, and you stop feeling inspired.
I had to learn how to negotiate my free time. And to negotiate you need results. You need to prove that you can do it – otherwise, you have nothing to bargain with.
██████, Design Director at ████
Working hard and being productive are key. Especially in the creative industry. People think that because you’re a creative, you can only work when you’re inspired. That is bullshit. You need to be organised, find a work process, and do it. You can be petrified by a lack of inspiration, but you need to keep trying. Through repetition, you can really achieve something.
Everyone has a different limit of how much they can do, of course. That’s personal. To figure that out, it’s always good to have something outside of work: a partner, a hobby, a nice group of friends outside of fashion.
I remember I once had a creative director screaming at me all day because a necklace couldn’t close. When I came home, my boyfriend mentioned the psychiatric hospital he works in had a double suicide among the patients. It’s good to have those reminders.
We’re not saving lives.
At the end of the day: chill.
████████, Design Director at ██████
When I graduated, I was just glad I survived. Finishing it, I thought, “I’m done with this.” London is one of the most expensive cities in the world, I couldn’t survive there. You need to be out there all the time, I just couldn’t do it. Mentally, I couldn’t. When I graduated, I needed a fucking break. I didn’t enter the system, and because of that, I don’t have access to that glamorous career path. Now I need to accept a low-level profile.
I feel like I can’t get back in now. I excluded myself from the place where everything happens. Outside of that bubble, nobody understands these references. I had to explain to people what an MA in fashion is, or who Rick Owens is.
That happens in other economies too. You go to the capitals where it happens. If you exclude yourself, you need to be happy with a job with a different profile because your value shifts.
I’m somehow connected through this weird wire, but I’m in a different bubble. I still discuss fashion as if I was there. I feel like a nerd, keeping up with stuff, but there is no exchange.
The truth is, this experience is worthless outside of the London system. I’m embarrassed to say it, because it cost me so much. That is so painful to realise.
████████, Senior Womenswear Designer at ████
Studying under Louise was traumatising. I came in as a lemon and was squeezed until not juice, but oil came out. I would have to go back and back again to my work. Don’t show your ideas too early, I learned, they will be trashed and