My parents raised me to be cheap; we barely spent any money. I loved clothes growing up, but without the money to spend on them, I went into thrifting.
The summer before Grade 9, I wanted to make an income for myself and saw how people used Depop to sell clothes and were really successful. I thought I was good enough, and knew the trends, so I started reselling on Depop. I did that for a couple years and gained a pretty significant income for my age, which honestly, was monetizing my shopping addiction.
Honestly, I've had people in my life say I'm stealing from people who need those clothes, but I feel that at the end of the day, you're making sustainable fashion accessible for everyone.
Some people may not live next to good thrift stores or cheap thrift stores. There's some crazy statistic saying that 80% of the clothes you see in the thrift store end up going to a landfill and getting thrown out. (After fact checking, we saw that it is actually 84%.) Better be resold then ending up in a landfill!
I also didn't thrift for the Nike, Adidas, or bigger brand clothes, but for a more niche taste that didn't feel like taking away the “good” stuff or “useful” items. I never took coats or important clothes as such.
My brand name used to be my name, Zahra Mustin, which was sort of ironic because Zara is this big horrible fast fashion brand that pumps out clothes, versus me who is more on the sustainable slow fashion side. For a while I had my name as Za(h)ra, but I realized that that could be seen as self important or confusing, and I wanted a catchier brand name I could use on stickers or on my packaging: to make my brand more merchandisable. I liked the way this name sounded after playing around with different possibilities.
I draw a lot of inspiration from the people around me, what I see in my everyday life.
For example, the lips tank are Diya Thomas's lips, one of my friends. When I was in 12th grade and started screen printing, I was having a bit of a feminist awakening moment, so a lot of my designs came from that. The Andrew tank, which has eyes on one side and a poem on the other, has a funny backstory. Andrew is my ex boyfriend, and half of the shirt is his eyes going down on a side, and the other half is a poem, a spoken word by Olivia Gatwood called 'Manic Pixie Dream Girl', which was how I felt in my relationship at the time and expressing it in my art.
I think it ended up turning into something cool, and while in hindsight it probably was a bit dramatic, but it made for a pretty cool shirt.
This is actually an interesting question, because my process has changed recently. Screen printing itself is easy, you just put a screen down on the article of clothing and put the ink on, then swipe it. Before that, coming up and burning the designs takes a while. I used to do the same design over and over on a white tank top, which was a pretty quick process.
I'm now trying to move towards a more ‘one on one' process: going to the thrift store and finding blank pieces that I think have potential, such as pants, vests, button down long sleeves, and making them into unique pieces by distressing parts, cutting other parts. It's much more conducive to my change in taste.
There was a time when I was really into the white tank top and pants, but now I'm more into things that give me a boxer silhouette or oversized clothing and suits. I felt like this is making me more excited about what I was making instead of staring at the same shirt for hours a day, which made me not excited about it anymore, and I wanted to find a way to make this more exciting for myself.
For me, the most fun part is going to the thrift store and finding those items, which I'm trying to bring back into what I'm doing. It's more true to what I envisioned the brand being- everything is totally unique, one of a kind, making it harder for bigger brands to rip off my designs when they're all different.
Well at first, it was definitely very upsetting. I found out before I had even made an Instagram account, when I was still on Depop and piloting out the Iris tank. I woke up one day with a DM from a girl accusing me of having stolen the shirt from AliExpress. She said she'd seen the design and said I was drop shipping, which is buying in bulk and then reselling. I thought this was weird and saw that AliExpress had the photographs I'd taken of myself on their website wearing my shirt, and if you scrolled down you saw what they were actually selling, a very obvious uglier and cheaper version of what I was doing. It was being sold for 6 CAD, which made me sad because of the work that I'd put into my design, especially since I feel like I price my shirts reasonably to make them affordable but also reflects the time and effort I've put into them.
Honestly, it's what pushed me to make an instagram, so I could have the platform to express what was going on. I knew so many other creators that had the same thing happen to them; when you scroll through AliExpress, Emmiol, or any of these sites, almost every design is yet another small creator behind the real design.
I started posting about this, which got me a lot of traffic to my page. A lot of people empathized, and it was one of the first times I'd gotten recognition from people with followers; a lot of influencers were seeing it. This kept on going; one of the brands would steal a design, and quickly the rest would as well. It got to the point where I would scroll on Instagram and see an ad for my shirt. It contributed a lot to me wanting to expand what I was doing; having a wider variety of designs, different materials and clothing items.
Anyone who's really into fashion and all that knows that a huge part is about finding those niche designers or creators, finding that one item no one else is going to have. When I was getting all this traffic to my page, it was great because it was putting my stuff out here and a lot more people were seeing it and people came back to my page often, but at the same time it was frustrating for me because it made the stuff I was designing less of a novelty for people; it almost cheapened it a bit. It got trendy, which was great for my growth, but was frustrating because I was sick of seeing my design everywhere. I could walk down the street wearing the same shirt as some other girl, except she got it on Shein, which got ugly to me, because I feel like I have too much of a superiority complex about my style to wear that. I know the demographic I'm trying to target is going to feel the same way as me. I was getting all this traffic, but it wasn't exactly the kind of traffic I wanted.
I know this sounds pretentious, but I think I wanted to sell my clothes to people who looked and thought about fashion the same way I did. It felt super commercialized and over saturated. I got sick of it and tired of printing those shirts. Honestly, they can have it; Shein can have it at this point.
This has been raised to me before, and something I've been wanting to expand for a while. Same as on Depop; I don't have employees, it was always me selling, modelling, trying on clothes to see if they fit. This was less of an issue when I was just selling on Depop, but now that I have my own line, there is definitely more of an obligation to make my clothing inclusive. As I started selling clothes to friends and family, I realized how many people I was excluding with my clothes, and while it is more difficult to source or less efficient, it's very important. It's one of the reasons I'm switching to the one on one; I can make more of a conscious effort to source clothes of all styles and have more variety all around.
Even me, I have no desire to wear these little shirts, it's not what makes me confident in my body. As I start expanding and changing things, I want to stay as inclusive as possible by having models other than myself- people of all shapes and sizes, and being more conscious about clothes I source.
It'll definitely be more of a time consuming process, which is almost why I want to do it. When I was experiencing that rapid growth, I got really caught up in the fact that I was making much more money and attention. Suddenly, it was about how efficient I could be, how fast I could make more and more clothes. This was exactly against my whole brand idea of promoting slow fashion, so this new process will definitely be slower- figuring out the layout of each piece every single time, instead of doing it for multiple. I'll have to shoot every item separately, fit packages differently, buy new envelopes- it all adds up. It'll be a lot less profitable in the end, but I think that by not getting caught up in the money aspect of and producing as much as possible, I can make clothes just for the enjoyment of it. I'm lucky enough to be at a point of my life where I have enough money to sustain that goal. I'm really looking forward to the fresh start and taking it slower, taking my time with each piece and being excited about every piece I make while including everyone I want to include. Taking it much slower is exciting.