When a fashion brand tells me that their, “dreamy, tropical wrap dress is a MUST-have this season,” I am not inspired to buy. I’ve heard that line so many times in slightly modified, equally unoriginal ways from so many different brands, that I can barely tell them apart anymore.
And that’s what fashion brands lack. They lack brand. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of clothing companies have a recognizable look, but a look is not a brand. A brand is the soul of a company: its values, personality and character. Think about it like this—if you were to take away the pictures on the instagram posts of your top 5 clothing brands, would you be able to tell them apart from the caption alone? If not, there’s a problem.
Fashion may be about how we dress, but beauty is so much more than how we look. Beauty is about who we are and how we feel about ourselves when no one is around. But so many fashion brands gloss over inner beauty, opting instead for cool looks and edgy trends that constantly come and go.
I couldn’t sustain my work with Mixed if I only cared about how my pieces made you look. Yes, feeling pretty is important. And yes, designing clothes is an art. But more importantly, feeling confident in who you are is so much more interesting and valuable to me. And ultimately, being happy with yourself will make you feel much more beautiful than any piece of clothing ever could.
When I first set out to create Mixed, I was insecure about the fact that I’m not a fashion fanatic. I don’t care about brand names, I don’t know much about luxury designers, I own a few pairs of shoes and have a minimal closet rack that I drilled into my bedroom wall to save some space in my NYC apartment. I’m not the kind of person that I’d imagine would start a fashion brand. And who even wants another clothing brand!? The industry is so saturated! But as I’ve continued to grow Mixed, I’ve realized that my disdain for the personality void I see in the fashion industry could only be an advantage. There are many brands that sell beautiful clothes, but how many of those companies go deeper? How many companies care how you feel, apart from how you feel about them? There’s a severe pain point in the fashion world, exacerbated by every cold stare from a model on a magazine cover: the brands we wear only connect with how we fantasize about ourselves, they don’t reflect who we are.
I think both women and men are craving something deeper than good looks these days. We want to feel good about who we are and show up as our authentic selves. So that’s why Mixed is here: to bring out all the you that you can be.
