Jonathan Anderson wants to encourage young designers to “embrace failure”.
Jonathan Anderson
The JW Anderson founder has told up-and-coming fashion designers they need to be “ready and excited to fail” before they can expect to have their big break, as he believes making mistakes is the best way to “learn” and improve.
When asked what advice he has for young designers, he said: “This would probably be my biggest piece of advice: to embrace failure, and to be ready and excited to fail, and to fail again. It’s a very good thing, because I think you learn from that. If you were told you were a genius all your life, then people would write you were a genius and that’s it, they don’t really tell you who you are, they don’t really go in depth into it. There’s nothing worse than the idea of the genius designer, it’s a sort of a very odd tombstone.”
And Jonathan, 36, thinks it’s important that rising stars in fashion stay “humble”.
The LOEWE creative director wants people in the fashion industry to realise how “lucky” they are for their careers, and to understand that “fashion isn’t the centre of the universe”.
Speaking to Vogue magazine, he added: “And probably my other advice would be to never compromise, in this day and age you have to crack your own self [open] - and I think it’s really a moment now that, when doing or being involved in fashion, you have to really look at yourself and say, I’m so lucky in what I do. No matter in what capacity you’re working in this industry - editor, buyer, stylist, producer, whatever - we never actually slow down and say, god, we’re lucky.
“There are lots of people who are not in that situation, and if you want to participate in fashion I think you really need to learn how to be humble, because if not, you become a very isolated character which I think in this day and age no one really wants anymore - no one wants elitism, no one wants ideas of privilege, that is not modern anymore. With what is happening in the greater world, fashion isn’t the centre of the universe.”