Vancouver Fashion School graduate Mary Ross sat down with me to discuss how she has been able to take her craft of clothing design and apply it to an online business in her first year after graduating.
Q: What has inspired you in your life the most in terms of being a designer?
A: It is difficult to say what exactly has inspired me the most because there has been so many major influences. I think the biggest influence, however, is my mother. She would always see me dressing in her clothes. I would take out almost all the clothes from her closet and I would probably try on most of them at once. I was always trying new combinations of clothing and I wanted so badly to make alterations to them, but I knew my mother would not approve of that.
Q: How did you transition from being a student to being a professional clothes designer?
A: The transition has been pretty much what I expected it to be. I knew there would not be a carpet pointing me in the direction of where I needed to go. I knew that there would not be a paying job waiting for me. I needed to be both a businessperson and a designer. If you don’t have both of those elements, there is very little that you are going to be able to accomplish.
It is very challenging to make a living in this career because there are so many people who want to do this and there is so little room for people to actually be able to make any money at it, especially if they do not know how to market themselves, and how to sell their own line of clothing. Fortunately, I had some knowledge of the online platform and so I was able to do a good job at getting my clothing onto my website and get people to take a look from there.
But it’s not like I just created a website and people started flooding into my business and buying my clothes. It is still very much an uphill climb and I have a long way to go before I can really make this my sole source of income.
Q: What would you recommend other designers do in order to start making a business out of their work?
A: Everyone needs to be a bit naïve to get into this business in the first place. I sort of see it as becoming an actor or a music star. Everyone wants to do it. Some people have incredible talent, but it is so hard to know whether you are talented until you actually go down the road of becoming a professional. It is a long road to go on before people are actually honest with your work.
The hard part is that there are so many talented people out there. I would say that maybe five per cent of people who get into this actually have some raw talent, but only five per cent of those people will actually be able to make a good living at this work. That means one in every 40 people who go to fashion school will actually be able to realize their dreams, and that is a scary thought. So my best advice would be to go in with low expectations. It might even be a good idea to go in with no expectations at all. Going to design school on the side of other career pursuits is probably the best way to go. That way, if you don’t make it, you are not scrambling to finish a psychology degree in your 30s.
Q: How long do you think it takes before you really know whether you have what it takes to be a designer who can make money at their work?
A: I remember this quote by John Cleese that talks about the fact that in order to be really good at something, one must work hard at that thing for a very long time. That means that no one really knows whether they are good at that thing until quite long into the process. I think a lot of people will go down the path of becoming a designer because it appeals to them more than going down the path of becoming a high school teacher, for example. I think some people might never know. And most people won’t admit that they are not a good designer. So many people will waste many years of their lives struggling to be a designer, but they will not be able to do so because it takes an incredible amount of talent to make it. And they will usually not give up because they can’t admit that they are no good at it.
Q: Where do you see yourself in five years?
A: I think I will be still growing my business. Hopefully I will be able to make enough money online in order to support my design habit. I don’t want to have to go back to school for something else. That would be the saddest day of my life. I really don’t know what else I could be doing other than designing. I’ve never really been good at much else. I want to be able to make a living at this in five years. I don’t know if I will be rich from it, but I will be happy if I can at least be able to feed myself. I think in five years my online clothing sales will pick up, and I would like to be able to open my first brick-and-mortar store that starts selling my clothes exclusively.
Sarah Khan
I really loved your article and Mary’s responses were so genuine. I like how she didn’t paint being a designer as glamourous and was very frank about how much work and passion goes into going down this career path. I especially liked the John Cleese quote I think that applies to so many things and it’s a great reminder that working hard pays off, but in order for that to happen you have to put in the time. I like how your questions flowed with her answers and expanded on what she said.