How To Find Inspiration For A Clothing Brand

Finding inspiration for your ideas might prove to be a difficult process, especially if you don't know where to look. It is common to feel overwhelmed by the lack of ideas and information, a highly discouraging and dragging phase for creatives and entrepreneurs, moreso when we’re constantly bombarded with social media posts, and the creative work of your peers in a particular industry. It can be argued that even people who proved to be successful tend to struggle with new ideas and feeling inspired to do something greater and/or different, so this is quite natural for individuals working within a creative space. There's always room for growth and improvement when it comes to running a clothing brand, and this can often rely on how motivated and inspired you are and how you process new ideas. 

Google is god (with a very small g)

In human history there has never been a time where the same information is instantly and massively attainable for individuals across various walks of life. The progress in technology rests its power in smartphones and the internet and these are increasingly becoming second nature for human beings, especially in urbanized areas. We can learn about people far from our reach, we can see where they are and how they live through easily accessible pictures and videos, and written forms of media. We can learn about history and its great events, we can learn about our current state and what's happening simultaneously around other parts of the world, or we can learn about the future and what other people design for the future. Google arguably knows us more than we know ourselves, based on the information it retains about our habits, curiosities and pattern recognitions related to your google searches, current topics of interest and consumer spending. If all this information about a person as famous as you are is attainable, imagine what we can find out about our historical and cultural icons, about places, people and events that fall under our topics of interest. Google works better if your searches are more specific or well defined, you get more fruitful information when you are fluent in the language of the “thing or idea” you are particularly interested in. Begin with one google search and keep that snowball rolling until your google searches are more refined, this will get you closer to the meat of the topic, and much closer to the important details. 

How to Steal like an Artist

Referencing previous media texts in your own work requires great skill and a certain level of intellect. Think about it, how can a work be truly original if it relies on somebody else's ideas to take form? How can you use the work of others to inspire new ideas without plagiarizing their content? My former lecturer would always say to us ‘there is nothing new under the sun’ and he emphasized the fact that ideas borrow from other ideas, and that works of art, creations and inventions derive from previously thought of ideas, more often, previous artworks, research, creations and inventions that relate to your topic of interest. Austin Kleon addresses this issue in his book titled “How to steal like an artist” and he simply shows us a way to gather different ideas and references in order to inspire, create and fuel our own unique ideas.  

The Arts and Culture

Art allows us to immerse ourselves in the experiences of others, we can live vicariously through the work of the many influential artists that have contributed to making bodies of work about the human condition. Seth Godin authored content on marketing and business related topics and he simplifies the meaning of the word culture by describing it as ‘people like us do things like this’. This definition helped me understand what culture is in modern society, and the importance of collaboration and like-mindedness with regard to fulfilling a unified vision. There are many different cultures and any individual can relate to one or more of these various cultures around the world, this will have an impact on how that individual sees and interprets the world around them. Particular works of art are directly about or relate to particular groups of people or a particular culture, yet there are numerous nuances within the art and culture space, and this can simultaneously appeal to more than one of these many cultures. Learn about your own culture(s) first and then about other cultures that you're unfamiliar with, search and gather content such as books, artworks, documentaries because these contain great insight about these cultures and they widen your view of the world around you.

Look at Your Immediate Environment

What’s a better way to look for inspiration than to look at your immediate surroundings? We have an abundance of information in our communities, from the physical environment itself and the people who populate it. You can pull inspiration from many spheres of your immediate environment, from the history and the stories told by the elders in the community, from the successes of the individuals or to the issues that plague your community, and from what the people in the community need, to individual aspirations and what the future holds for the community. It all boils down to you being receptive and defining your own environment in order to identify the basic aspects of your environment and the complexities associated with that environment. 

Blogs, Pinterest, Fashion websites

The internet has become a playground for the curious and you can find almost anything you search for. It is wise that you find out as much as you can about other people’s cultures and experiences so that you have a plethora of topics, phrases, ideas and words that you can search for when you encounter online platforms such as pinterest, dazed digital, hypebeast, etc,. If you do not have sufficient information or a clue about the topics you're interested in, you will find yourself staring at a blank google page, not knowing which words you can use to find the information that you actually need.

Embrace the Ecosystem: Art, Business and Culture

Art, business and culture exist within an ecosystem and inspiration is highly accessible to individuals who understand how this ecosystem operates. A natural curiosity about the world will help get you to the details, it is important that you listen more than you speak, absorb all that is around and make that work for your ideas!