Wearable Art: A Clothing Design Hobby Turned Business

I’m Nathan, the creator of Forme Prints, which is a clothing company which sells apparel which I’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, I’d been given enough encouragement that I’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 that’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.

As simple as it sounds, I’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 didn’t dread waking up for in the morning.

While I didn’t envisage that this would’ve been my exact path, I think the skateboarding world has been the biggest inspiration for me heading into this area of work. It’s something I discovered in my early teens and was completely absorbed by. I loved the creativity of it all, including the fashion. It’s always been so different and there’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 weren’t involved in that world, you’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 it’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 I’ve always enjoyed the indie music scene which plays its part in fashion, but without skateboarding, I definitely wouldn’t have ever found myself in this field of work.

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 it’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 I’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 I’m doing something right. I’m not too sure what will be a success in the future for me, but I’ll be happy if I could continue to have this as my line of work.

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 wasn’t really generating too much interest. That’s when I decided I’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. It’s been seriously important getting the chance to gauge people’s reactions and interact with them over the clothing.

I’m sure this advice won’t work for everyone, but as a person who is a bit of an over thinker, I’d say don’t think too much and just do. If I would’ve sat and thought about it for too long, I absolutely would’ve talked myself out of ever doing this. I’d have convinced myself that no one would be interested.

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

Website: www.formeprints.com

Instagram: Forme_printsuk