Choosing the name for your fashion brand can be a surprisingly complicated process. While it may initially be simple to come up with a name you love, you also need to perform your due diligence to ensure it’s not already taken or trademarked. When Lafayette 148 New York first started out in 1996, they underestimated the process of securing their name and brand.

Their name, chosen because it was their street address in iconic New York City, was challenged three years into business by a French department store with Lafayette also in their name. Lafayette 148 already had a few stores, branding, and stationery in their name at this point. Luckily, their trademark infringement claim was denied since the department store did not have a brand presence in the U.S.A.

After winning the U.S. trademark case, Lafayette 148 New York expanded their fashion business into Canada and also won their trademark. The process of securing and protecting their brand name was one country at a time and involved costly legal fees. In their case, they must always include the numbers and New York in their name.

When deciding on the name for your fashion brand, it’s smart to look up any potential names on the United States Patent and Trademark Office website and see if they are already a registered trademark. If not, you can apply for a trademark in your specific category as well as secure your website domain and social media handles.

Many people choose to use their own name or initials for their fashion brand. Using online fashion education and noting what makes your brand unique or what words describe your aesthetic can help you come up with a classic name that accurately conveys your brand.

In the head space of the consumers and the industry, brands have a front door. The front door that makes the first impression on the world. This is the name. Coming up with a name that’s going to resonate is super important for your brand. It should be something that people can remember. It should be a name that’s going to stick around.

It’s a mystery why some brand names resonate and why some don’t. We can ask, how did this brand become a huge brand and this brand not? Ultimately, determining why some names stick is hard to kind of quantify. How these brands endure has to do with what’s behind the name. Names are certainly important.

When naming a brand, it’s important to consider a number of factors. If you are starting a brand that you want to have a global scale, you have to consider how the name will translate. For example, you have to ask yourself how this name will translate into Mandarin for a business in China, which is a really important market. Ask yourself: How is this name going to project around the globe?

Thinking about a brand and the name for it can be tricky. “There are certain things that I love for my personal aesthetic. For example, I love genericness, but at the same time it has to be searchable, it has to be found in the world. Like for example, there’s a music group called Men or there’s another music group called The Internet. And I think that’s so fun, but at the same time, it is impossible to find, and it’s not really but it is. Then also, I think personal connections again, make the most sense,” says [INSERT SPEAKER HERE].

What’s in a name? The choice of branding is one that’s fraught with potential pitfalls in fashion business. The eponymous brand means naming the brand after yourself. The world is rife with eponymous brands and some of the biggest brands are named after their designers. Even the great fashion houses of Europe are named after their initial designer.

There’s a precedence for this type of naming, but it also puts the designer in a difficult position once they need investors. Investment comes with degrees of control. If an investor buys into your brand and your brand is Douglas Hand, and you are Douglas Hand, that investor wants 33 percent of the company that holds the trademark Douglas Hand.

Investors will have a lot of input on how the Douglas Hand name is used. You may not agree with those things, but your name is outside of your own control. Now it’s in the control of a constituency that is usually focused on return.

In the 1980s, you had Calvin Klein with his name sewn on really cheap underwear. They made a lot of royalties, but Calvin himself probably wasn’t very happy about it. That is one pitfall of the eponymous brand.

Lawyers and fashion education experts advise clients to come up with something fanciful when deciding on a brand’s name. Why fanciful? You have the benefit of not having to possibly give up the rights to your personal name in the future if you decide to sell your brand.

Another pitfall for names is you can’t choose something that’s purely descriptive. American Apparel, for example, was selling American-made apparel, not the brand. They didn’t have trademark rights until the world recognized American Apparel meant it’s from the Los Angeles-based company run by Dov Charney. It takes a while to build up that name recognition in the mind of the consumer.


Retail has rapidly changed over the years, with some fashion brands opting for alternatives to the traditional brick & mortar, physical store concept. You’ll find brands focusing solely on e-commerce and not having a physical location. Others have a more hybrid approach. Their physical store serves as more of a showroom for potential customers to see their brand in person before later purchasing online.

The innovative use of the showroom concept for fashion retail locations has been adopted by major brands including Bonobos. Potential customers can check out the brand in person, assessing quality, materials, colors, and sizing. Unlike a traditional retail store where you can purchase on site for instant gratification, the showroom concept has customers place their order at the showroom or online for pick up at the showroom.

The showroom model has become a marketing and advertising play for a lot of retailers. Physical retail is also turning into industrial fulfillment, where they’ll do a hybrid model where there’s the showroom and the goods will be at the fulfillment center.

Nordstrom is currently doing this model where half of their stores use this concept called the “bricks to clicks effect.” Through fashion education and trend spotting, a lot of fashion brands are starting to reevaluate their sales channels. Ifthey have a brick and mortar location for consumers to see the styles in person, they’re starting to see in increased online sales in that geographic area – the bricks to clicks effect.

This sales data is being monitored by performance analytics tools like like the Guest platform. Also, point of sale (POS) companies are starting to provide more granular data to their customers and their retailers, so they can use this data to make better qualified buying decisions going forward.

In the fashion business, “collection” basically means articles of clothing or different items in the clothing line that make up a new collection. What’s the difference between “collection” and “line”? A line is simply a specific organized group of garments that has a centralized concept. It’s a little bit similar to collection. For a designer, you many have different lines working under your label, meaning you have a contemporary line, a high-end line, and a low-end, mass-market line. These lines sell to different clients with different price points.

For a contemporary collection, designers may produce anything from 15 pieces to 30 pieces or 30 styles. For a larger designer corporation or designer label, they may produce as many as 70 to 100 styles per season. We dress differently in the four different seasons of the year. Some designers like to combine the seasons together to create a spring/summer and fall/winter collection every year. For larger mass-market stores, such as Gap, they will produce spring 1, spring 2, spring 3, summer 1, summer 2, summer 3, and so on.

Designers use their fashion education and take a look at what is necessary for their customers in each distinct season. A jacket for a cold wintry day, or a blazer for a nice spring afternoon with some breeze. Creating a complete seasonal look is key. Another important aspect of designing a fashion collection is you want to have a centralized theme. If you’re using all earthy tones, then use only warm, natural tones. If you want to do a neon pop color collection, then you might choose hot pinks, hot reds, and hot blues. Therefore, your fabrications and colors should be pretty much uniform and fit the overall theme.

“Every season as a team we collectively go through all of the runway shows from New York, London, Milan, and Paris, and pull through actual looks that we think will work for future stories at Teen Vogue,” Says Sarah Brody. “Once we’ve identified the trend for the season, we go through all of our market images, which are the photos that we’ve taken at all the appointments that we’ve gone to so far, and we pull out the lower end market and the more affordable pieces that we think that our readers want to see on the page that still relates to the bigger trends that we’ve seen this season.”

“After that, we compile a book that we present to Amy, our editor in chief and our creative director at Marie. We go over every single trend, what styles we think might like that trend, what photographer would work well with it, and we send them out to all the stylists and photographers that we work with regularly. They send back their feedback and some inspiration images that they would want to incorporate for a future shoot for the magazine.”

“As shoots are confirmed, we work with stylists to call in the best pieces that we think will work for the story that they’re doing. Whether that’s a sweater from Guess or a pair of jeans from AG, we’re always looking for the best pieces in the market because it’s our job as editors to not have everything here.”

“Once everything is here and laid out, it’s organized on racks and tables. We then, as a team, edit through to what we think are the best of the best pieces that we want to show the stylists and show Amy in the run through. For those of you that don’t know what a run through is, it’s like a dress rehearsal before a show,” Explains Brody.

“We go through everything. Amy picks out her favorite pieces as the stylists goes through the looks that they’ve created. We talk over the shoot before it actually happens.”

“My favorite part of my job is meeting with new designers and figuring out how I can incorporate them into the book. After all, the Teen Vogue tagline is ‘fashion starts here’. A special experience for me was our main cover story with Kylie Jenner where our sales brand and Maxwell asked the fashion team if we knew of any designers that sent a muslin dress down the runway, and no one really did.”

“I thought of a friend that was just starting out on his own, and I asked him if he would make a dress. Brandon, myself, and my friend Max designed the entire thing from scratch. I was super excited when it ended up being shot. Here’s the image of Kylie and her friends wearing it. That was just one of the many, many memories I have of working here at Teen Vogue.”

Sample creation is essential to making fashion products that sell. According to Angela Gao, no design process is complete without time spent creating and refining these mockups.

“When I’m designing, I like to have a mood board right where I work. If I find appealing images for a new collection, I pin them up along with fabrics I’d like to use.”

Next, Gao refines the creative inspirations she’s collected. “I sort the fabric I’ve gathered. Then, I develop sketches representing flat joins of what I’d like to produce.”

Sample making comes next. Many designers produce samples in factories or designated sample rooms, but smaller designers may prefer in-house production.

“I usually produce the initial mockups and send them directly to my factories,” continues Gao. “Then the factories send me the completed samples.”

Sample-making ensures that everything fits before it goes into production or gets sold to stores. Gao says the extra effort helps her create quality products for her target consumers through a “fit modeling” process.

“Working with fit models is important, but it differs from runway shows,” Gao explains. “Runways are glamorous, so everything is slim, skinny, and tall. When you’re selling to a customer or buyer, however, your work must fit real people. Fit models have the perfect sizing that matches typical clientele. The fitting process lets the designer fix aspects that they dislike and adjust poorly fitting elements. For example, if an armhole looked too big, the designer would pin it up and resize it at this stage.”

Gao also says that fit modeling is just the first step – It’s important to recheck the work afterward. “After you finish fitting a garment, you can send the sample back to the factory. When the factory returns an adjusted prototype sample, you’ll check it against a fit model again.”

Sample making also facilitates business opportunities known as sample sales. “A sample sale is a retail channel for designers to sell samples,” says Gao. “Companies can generate some extra profit by selling samples that would go unused. The only downside of this practice is that samples aren’t perfect. Sometimes, they might lack buttons, closures, zippers, or other features. They also can have fit issues. Nonetheless, sample sales offer great deals.”

Many people spend vast amounts of their personal money and don’t realize how much they will need to pay because it’s tough to figure out when to step out of that process. While many businesses worldwide are started this way, there needs to be an understanding of how far you can go with that. It is also wise to line up another source of funding for your business, both for peace of mind and to allow your business and your personal life to have some separation.

Other people are much more savvy about finding funding very early through networking. So, find people, investors, and other founders willing to take on a young brand or project. Do thorough research. Network a lot. Figure out how that works, what the risks are, what the opportunities are, and then make sure that you understand how much of both your own money and external investors’ money you’re going to need to spend in order to get to the level of success that you aspire to.

That’s where having a business mind, a business mentor, and a business partner is critical from day one. Because you don’t want to be in a position where you’re either spending all of your savings to make your dream come true, or you hit success, and you don’t have the financial means to achieve it. In other words, that you can’t meet the demand. So it is highly critical that financing comes into the picture from the get-go and that you are able to scale your financing according to the brand’s success and goals.

Fashion and footwear collections typically begin with moods, and this is why we call it the “mood board.” A mood board is made by finding inspirational images that fit your mood or theme, cutting out pictures from magazines, newspapers, and physically putting them on a cork board or pinning images on Pinterest. The mood board creates the vision of the collection, whether it’s dramatic and dark or resembles a softer aesthetic.

It will depend on the season as well as who you’re targeting in the footwear business. Who’s the target audience? Creating your footwear collection requires both creativity but also practical online footwear education on seasonal trends, forecasting, and catering to your goal customer and retail stores.

You’ll want to know what’s happening in retail stores simultaneously. Visit stores, such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Bergdorf Goodman, to observe and see which colors and details resonate for your own collection. What fabrics and embellishments strike a chord? You may see something at the back counter, or a small detail on a bag, or even the woman walking on the escalator captures your mood. Inspiration can be found at every turn.

The footwear education and design process is important for everyone to know, not just the designers. The process to get there needs to be, and is, touched by all different people throughout the shoe company. It includes the research of color, material, trends, design ideation, and the editing process to get to the best design.

Making shoes requires an extensive product development period where you’re not only working to resource your materials, prototype, and sample, but you’re getting the fit right. All of this needs to be done in a timely manner. This all happens before any pre-production or production and many people touch and influence the design process from marketing to customer, designer, and executives.

A customer profile is extremely important because if you’re trying to sell to everyone, you won’t sell to anyone because you’ll be too spread apart. You have to have a focal point on the kind of customer you want to go after because after you grow, your customer profile will grow, and you will gain others. You have to have that strong focal point in the beginning of what’s the customer you envision wearing your brand or wearing your shoes. One customer profile is a sexy, sassy woman or man that loves wearing stiletto heels.

When identifying a customer for your product, it’s important to know who your customer is, but also what is your product and service? After identifying what your product or service is, you’ll be in a better place to identify who your customer is. Start customer identification through demographics. What is their income? What is their location? What do they do for a living? What is their age? What is their ethnicity?

There are cultural nuances that influence a customer’s buying decisions as well. To further that customer selection, it’s also important to know customer psychographics. What are their hobbies? What do they enjoy doing in their free time? What are their favorite colors? What is their personality?

A lot of times this research is readily available, and you can search past footwear outlets or resources to find that information. Another great way to find this information is through social media. You can maybe hold a small focus group. You could reach out to your friends and family to get their insights.

If there are different groups on different social media platforms, whether those are sneaker lovers, leather shoe lovers or Timberland lovers, you can reach out to these groups to really tap into finding out what it is that they look for in their footwear selection.

If that is your customer, that is a great way for you to identify them. Talk to them and get inside their mind. What are their hobbies? What do they like to do? Are they the ones who are going to be purchasing your shoe? If not, then maybe you need to direct and find someone else. When you are doing the research to identify your customer, keep these things in mind: demographics, psychographics, and everything else will fall into place.