Should you design for ART or COMMERCE?

I have a clothing brand. I started it almost three and a half years ago. Combined across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, there are about 1.3 million followers.

In January, I will show a small collection at Paris Fashion Week, including collaborations with XX XXXXXXX and XXXXXXX (redacted until 2027), two large fashion brands I used to read about in magazines. I now work as a full-time designer. From where I started, a middle-aged doctor with a TikTok account and a dream, this is a success.

I am not ungrateful. In fact, I am extremely grateful, mostly because my decision-making has not been sound over the last 3 years. I have been close (extremely close!) to killing the company three times, following my whims.

I am not a believer that poor decisions and glaring oversights are the universe’s secret plan to lead me to success, that everything happens for a reason. Given the chance again, I would have changed several decisions about products I made.

That’s the huge reason I don’t like giving prescriptive advice. I made educated guesses. And they are still guesses today. Instead, I can show you the common dilemmas faced, and what are some ways you could approach the early problems. Do you make the thing you're desperate to make, or the thing you think people are most likely to buy? How do you know what people want? What ideas are cool? How do you make a cool idea into a cool product?

Firstly, some assumptions. You DON’T have any money. You DO have time, energy and a psychological reserve that can withstand making mistakes publicly and often. Okay, let’s begin.