The dangers of self-branding in fashion

Creating a brand is a bit like giving birth to a child. This sentiment is often echoed in fashion schools by design students at the end of the year, as they watch their graduation collections hit the runway for the first time. As cliché as the phrase “it was like giving birth” might sound, designing a project from start to finish, shaping it, and finally presenting it to the press and clients requires a colossal mental and physical effort. Among the many things a new brand needs, there is, of course, its name. And here lies a world of possibilities. Some study literature and art history to find a sophisticated title for their creations, others settle for a fun nickname, and then there are those who dream of seeing their own name printed on a label. In recent years, this latter option seems to have gained popularity: since social media commercialized personal identity and the world of influencers inflated the value of certain names (but only those with a significant number of followers), even some young designers have fallen into the trap of self-branding. If you’re wondering why this could be a risk, take a moment to look back: what happened to the companies of Martha Stewart, Alexander Wang, and Chiara Ferragni once their image was tarnished by serious accusations?

Designers and fashion creators have chosen to name their brands after themselves since the early history of fashion: Charles Frederick Worth, Christian Dior, Yves Saint Laurent, and Coco Chanel are examples. But in their times, issues like business scalability and cancel culture were not yet part of the common vocabulary. While gaining popularity in the influencer world is easy, it’s equally easy to fall into obscurity. Consequently, naming a business after oneself—and thus tying the brand’s identity to one’s own—undeniably puts the future of the company at risk. To better explain this phenomenon, one could recount the rise and fall of Martha Stewart’s empire, recently highlighted in the Netflix documentary The Many Lives of Martha Stewart. Considered by media experts and colleagues as “the first influencer in history”, the American host and TV personality became famous in the late 1980s by showing the U.S. public how to be the perfect homemaker. Her endless success with television programs, magazines, and books on cooking, DIY, and gardening led her to list Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia on the stock market in 1999. However, three years later, Stewart found herself embroiled in a financial scandal that resulted in five months of imprisonment and five months of house arrest. As a consequence, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (which was valued at $2 billion) suffered an incredible collapse on the stock market, forcing Stewart to withdraw from the business world and sell off her empire piece by piece. In the documentary, one interviewee emphasized that “Stewart’s biggest mistake was giving her name to her company.” Once Stewart’s character was overshadowed by controversy, the brand’s reputation crumbled alongside hers.

In the new millennium, Martha Stewart’s ill-fated story has resurfaced in different forms, with examples like the Pandorogate scandal involving Chiara Ferragni in 2023, which primarily impacted the stores selling her eponymous brand. Another case is Alexander Wang, who withdrew his brand (and thus his name) from the Fashion Week calendar for four years following sexual misconduct allegations in 2019, only to return in 2022 without fully recovering from the fallout. Moreover, naming a brand after oneself carries significant risks not only for the company but also for the individual. Virgil Abloh, known as a master of trademarks, was rumored to have registered his own name as intellectual property. Increasingly, entrepreneurs—especially in the beauty sector—have learned to dissociate their names from their brands. Take, for example, the many celebrity brands from Hollywood stars that often do not include their founders’ names: Rhode, Florence by Mills, Fenty Beauty, Goop, and Haus Laboratories. This choice to protect personal identity may have been inspired by numerous cases where past designers lost rights to their names: Jil Sander, Thierry Mugler, Martin Margiela, Ann Demeulemeester, Helmut Lang, Halston, John Galliano, and Donna Karan. These designers sold the trademarks tied to their names but consequently lost the right to use them. For instance, when designer Jil Sander returned to collaborate with Uniqlo in 2020, the collection was named J+ because the use of “Uniqlo x Jil Sander” would have implied that it was the brand, not the designer, collaborating with the Japanese retailer. As a representative of the brand clarified to nss magazine, “The brand bears her name, but Ms. Sander is no longer connected to the maison’s activities.”

Associating one’s identity with what is sold is, in essence, like openly exposing oneself to criticism and insults. As has often happened to public figures who have turned their personalities into brands, the only person gravely affected by controversies like those of Martha Stewart is the one who decided to put their face on the line. So, while naming a project after oneself may be a source of pride, it does not always yield the desired results: fame, after all, is not the real secret to success—in fashion or elsewhere.