Wearable Art: A Clothing Design Hobby Turned Business

An Interview with Nathan on Crafting Custom Screen-Printed Fashion

Happy Sunday. This week we are talking with Nathan, a clothing designer who started out screen printing his designs onto friends and familyā€™s clothing as a hobby but quickly realised the potential to turn it into a full-time business. Now, he sells his designs at artisan markets, pop-up shops, and various independent retailers.

Nathanā€™s interview is filled with quality advice for anyone looking to start a side business or even looking to take on a full-time career. His advice includes:

  • The importance of getting started with your idea and not allowing self-doubt to stop you.

  • Defining your success and adapting it as you progress.

  • Targeting local markets instead of getting lost in the online space.

Now, over to Nathan!

The 5-9 Formula Line Breakk

Forme Prints

Can you tell me a little bit about yourself and your business?

Iā€™m Nathan, the creator of Forme Prints, which is a clothing company which sells apparel which Iā€™ve designed, and screen printed by hand.

I started at the end of 2017 when I bought a basic screen-printing kit, just because I was curious about how graphics can be put onto different pieces of clothing. I quickly became engrossed with the whole process, and it became a hobby for me to take requests from friends and family, create designs around what they asked for, and print these onto t-shirts.

This helped massively to refine my printing skills, where a lot of trial and error was required, but also it encouraged me to create a bit of my own style when it came to the design aspect of things.

After a few years, Iā€™d been given enough encouragement that Iā€™d grown in confidence to start doing my own thing. In January 2020, Forme was created. I chose the name because the very first prints were just basic shapes and with my nonno (grandad) being Italian, I knew I wanted some connection to Italy, therefore Forme, which means shapes/forms in Italian felt fitting.

With the name chosen, my next priority was to make sure I was environmentally responsible with my products. This means all the clothing is made from organic cotton, no harsh chemicals are used in the printing process, only using water-based inks and printing to demand to minimise dead stock.

With all this in place, I slowly built up a catalogue of different designs, initially focusing everything online but in June 2021 I went to my first market and thatā€™s where it all changed for me. Now almost every weekend you can find me out and about somewhere doing a market, event or pop-up shop.

What was your main inspiration for getting into this line of work?

As simple as it sounds, Iā€™ve always wanted to do something that I enjoyed for work. Your job can be such a big part of your life that I knew I wanted to do something that I didnā€™t dread waking up for in the morning.

While I didnā€™t envisage that this wouldā€™ve been my exact path, I think the skateboarding world has been the biggest inspiration for me heading into this area of work. Itā€™s something I discovered in my early teens and was completely absorbed by. I loved the creativity of it all, including the fashion. Itā€™s always been so different and thereā€™s quite a lot of freedom in terms of design. It also has a large portion of smaller independent U.K. brands, that if you werenā€™t involved in that world, youā€™d probably never discover them. They still manage to generate a bit of a cult following, though, so it always given off an impression that itā€™s possible to make a mark.

I have other influences in my artwork, the 90s play a bit part in my designs, an era I enjoyed growing up through as a child and Iā€™ve always enjoyed the indie music scene which plays its part in fashion, but without skateboarding, I definitely wouldnā€™t have ever found myself in this field of work.

How do you define success in your business?

I never really had any goals for this business, everything has felt like a natural progression so far. I think success is something I look back on in hindsight, so itā€™s always changing a bit for me. Something I often think about is my first ever market, where I sold four pieces of clothing, while this may not be a success now, that was huge for me back then, it let me know that there was actual interest in my designs.

I now consider having regular customers as a big success, along with getting invited by other businesses to attend their pop-up shop or markets and Iā€™ve also ended up being stocked in couple of shops through being discovered at markets. These things have meant a lot to me, as it shows me that Iā€™m doing something right. Iā€™m not too sure what will be a success in the future for me, but Iā€™ll be happy if I could continue to have this as my line of work.

If you were to start again from scratch, what would you do differently?

I would change my initial direction, by getting straight out to different markets and events, instead of putting too much importance in the online aspect of things.

When I first started, it was just meant to be an online project, but after a year or so, it wasnā€™t really generating too much interest. Thatā€™s when I decided Iā€™d give a market a go, just to see scratch that itch and see if it could produce any actual interest. Without doing that, I most certainly wouldn't be doing this as a job now. Itā€™s been seriously important getting the chance to gauge peopleā€™s reactions and interact with them over the clothing.

What advice would you give to someone just starting out in a similar field?

Iā€™m sure this advice wonā€™t work for everyone, but as a person who is a bit of an over thinker, Iā€™d say donā€™t think too much and just do. If I wouldā€™ve sat and thought about it for too long, I absolutely wouldā€™ve talked myself out of ever doing this. Iā€™d have convinced myself that no one would be interested.

I think itā€™s also really important to get out there and meet people, itā€™s the best way of getting your artwork or creations out into the world, you truly never know what it will lead to.

Where can people find you?

The 5-9 Formula Line Breakk

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If youā€™d like to read last weekā€™s newsletter, an interview with Sujal, a newsletter writer who scaled his side hustle to earn a full-time income. Check it out here.

Thank you all,

See you next week! šŸ‘‹