NEW YORK — True mentorship can make the difference between success and failure in the fashion industry.
That was the takeaway from a conversation between Sir Paul Smith and Thom Browne, chairman of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, at the home of British Consul General Thursday night.
The designers, seated in front of a bank of windows with a jaw-dropping view of the East River and beyond, provided some insight into last month’s announcement of the inaugural Paul Smith’s Foundation x CFDA Designer-in-Residence. The 18-month mentorship program will include one American designer who will join six U.K.-based designers at The Fashion Residency at Studio Smithfield beginning in January.
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The American finalists are Colleen Allen, Menyelek Rose and Taylor Thompson, and the winning candidate will receive a complimentary 400-square-foot studio space for 12 months supported by Projekt. He or she will be provided with mentoring and business-planning training from industry professionals, have access to shared facilities including an event space, meeting rooms, a dye room and a reading room.
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Browne said the fledgling designers who are selected for the program are being offered “an amazing gift” that can help jump-start their careers.
Smith said when he was starting out in 1970, he had “all these unanswered questions — all these things I’d like someone to help me with. That’s why I started the foundation.”
As part of the program, the student designers receive 40 hours of training in legal, finance, production and wholesaling, content creation, styling, communications, social media and the other “mysterious things” that are essential to creating a successful brand.
As both designers said, being creative and having a point of view are important, but that has to be balanced by business acumen in order to be successful. And it doesn’t happen overnight.
Browne said for the first five years of his business, he was creating “unwearable, unsalable things,” and was on the verge of going out of business. “They laughed at me on the street, they didn’t understand what I was doing. They didn’t understand why they would buy something that didn’t look like it fit me.”
But eventually, the tide turned and he found success.
“If you love doing it more than anything else in the world, and you couldn’t think of doing anything else, then commit to it and do beautiful things. And hopefully it works,” Browne said.
Smith too had a rough first few years. “My business was so slow for so many years. We had a tiny little shop and we’re taking in hardly any money at all, but it was just great, I loved it,” Smith said. But things could have been different if he’d had a mentor. “Nobody taught me anything. That’s why I’m trying to help out.”
He learned early on that in order to survive, “you have to have a security blanket” — a way to pay the rent. Browne added: “If you want to stay in business, you have to figure out the other things.”
But while understanding the business end of the industry is paramount to survival, designers still need to take risks, they said.
“You have to be doing things that sometimes make you a little uncomfortable — scare you a little bit,” Browne said. “It’s very easy to do something that you know is going to sell, which is so boring. When you’re doing something that is unsettling to you, but you love it so much, and you know it’s going to start a conversation, I think that’s exactly what we should be doing.”
Smith agreed: “We need surprises, because the world is just so similar all the time and there’s a lot less joy than there used to be. We need some more joy.”
The Fashion Residency at Studio Smithfield was created in 2024 by the Mayor of London, Paul Smith’s Foundation and Projekt. It is supported by British GQ and enabled through support from the City of London Corp.