On Entering The Fashion Industry In Quite An Untraditional Way

Three pieces of advice, based on my experience.

I’ve been running Data, But Make it Fashion full-time for almost one year now, though I first started the account while I was an undergraduate computer science student back in 2019. The Instagram page was (and still is) a fun way for me to share how I was attempting to combine my work in data analysis with my passion for fashion.

Especially when trying to bring together two fields that feel quite inaccessible and exclusive—technology for its rigid “tech bro” stereotypes, and fashion for its The Devil Wears Prada-esque air of exclusivity—it’s certainly been a learning journey to understand how I could make this intersection as accessible as possible, and truly resonate.

Today, nearly seven years later, I’ve found my place in the fashion industry, albeit in quite an untraditional way (“data analyst” probably isn’t the first job that comes to mind when you think of working in fashion).

So, I thought I’d share some lessons that helped me establish myself not only within the niche intersection of fashion and technology, but also in the greater fashion industry overall. Based on my personal experience, of course.

ON THROWING SOMETHING AT THE WALL TO SEE IF IT STICKS

When trying to carve out or establish yourself within a space (and especially within a specific niche), there’s not always a dedicated playbook to follow.

For example, when I first considered posting data-analytics-fashion content online, how could I ensure it was both detailed-enough yet still-accessible to folks outside of both fashion and technology altogether? What was the best way to make this very-niche information fun and exciting? How could I get people who knew little about either space simultaneously interested in both?

And while there are so many valuable things I learned about the fashion and technology industries alike through books (some of my best recommendations here), and podcasts (more recommendations here), and listening to advice from others, there are some things I could not have learned without simply getting started. So, to answer all these questions and more, I just had to, well, do it.

My New Years’ resolution in 2023 was to post one thing on Data, But Make it Fashion every day. This meant that, every day, through putting something new out there and seeing how people responded to it, I was learning how to best communicate my fashion-tech ideas and carve out this space even further. Quickly, I better understood what to do as well as what not to do; what to focus on and what to scrap altogether.

Quite literally imagine yourself throwing pieces of content at a wall (informative videos, graphics-heavy Instagram carousels, something you spent nine minutes on, something you spent nine hours on), and checking if it “sticks”. And go from there.

Not to mention that, often, these learnings contradicted what I may have expected to happen. You hear it all the time in social media—the post that took you nine minutes to create will go viral, while the one that took you nine hours to make will be a flop. These things, of course, you can only learn by doing.

Some of my most viral online posts are when I analyzed the wardrobes of TV characters, like Sex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw or Friends’ Rachel Green. Others are about colors, like the recent rising popularity of blue, or the prominence of orange last year, which I found people were quite passionate about.

I wouldn’t have known any of this (what topics people are interested in, what to keep posting, how to share this information, in what format and to what degree of detail) if I hadn’t just tried, and thrown it all at the wall in the first place.

IT WORKS UNTIL IT DOESN’T

So, you’re throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. You’ve found out what works. Great! But what happens when what once stuck, just doesn’t stick anymore?