Vera Wang started as a Vogue assistant at 21, worked her way up through Ralph Lauren, then launched her own bridal line. The lesson: work for an established company first to learn the industry, get mentorship, and make mistakes without risking your own money before you start your own brand.
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Hello and welcome to episode 2 in the How to Start a Fashion Business series. Episode 1 was featuring Calvin Klein and it was on how to find your passion. If you missed it, you could check it out here. Today's lesson features Vera Wang and it's work to learn. If you don't have a lot of experience in the fashion industry yet, your best bet isn't to jump in and start your own business. It's to go work for somebody who's currently doing what you're trying to do. That way you can make your mistakes and get paid to do it while learning about your industry. When Vera Wang was 21 years old, she wanted to get into the fashion business, but she had zero experience. So she went to go work for Vogue magazine, working as an assistant to Pauli Mellon, who was the fashion director. She worked hard, learned the ropes, and within 2 years became the magazine's fashion editor. She was 23 years old, she was in a demanding position working every weekend and every evening, but she knew that the experience would be worth it. Now she stayed with Vogue magazine for 15 years, but then she started to get restless and wanted to get into the design of fashion. But before starting her own business, she wanted to work for someone who had a lot of experience in that field, and that was Ralph Lauren. So she left Vogue to become the design director for accessories for Ralph Lauren, where she stayed there for 2 years. She learned everything she needed to learn about designing, then was ready to launch her own business creating wedding gowns. Fast forward to today, and she's a brand name designer creating collections for some of the richest and most famous people in the world. Her advice for people who are just starting up is: Go work for somebody and get paid to learn. It's tempting to think you can go off and do your own thing, but there is so much to learn in ways you'd never know. Now, you don't need to go and spend 17 years working for somebody else before you can launch your business. But it also might be foolish to think you can just jump in and have success right away. Find a company that you look up to. Find a company that you want to be like in a couple years. Go work for them and get as close to the entrepreneur founder as possible, taking on as many responsibilities as you can because you're there not to make money, but to learn about the business. You're getting paid to make mistakes. You're getting paid to make connections. You're getting paid to understand how the industry works. You might be there for 6 months, a year, 2 years, 3 years, but when you feel like you've learned everything you need to learn and you're ready to go start your business, you'll have a much higher degree of becoming successful. Now you might be frustrated, you might be anxious, you might be ready to start your business right now and say, "How do I? I wanna start it right now! How do I start going right now?" But for a lot of you, if you don't have the experience, your best next step is to go work for somebody else instead of starting your company right now. Go learn from them and dramatically increase the chance of you becoming successful in the fashion business. Believe. For those of you watching, you like the video, let me know what you think in the comments below and subscribe to the channel if you want to see more videos like this. Thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you soon.
Self-improvement books are like fitness books. They never work on their own. What you need is a trainer. That's Evan. Get the newsletter.
