You might have an eye for fashion, but to build a successful textile empire, you must have the knowledge and experience of many years. Luckily, you can look to the following successful clothing brands to learn from and draw inspiration from their journeys and add your own unique style!
SikSilk
SikSilk, one of the best global clothing brands today, started with caps in 2012. Founded by three best friends in the United Kingdom, the brand recognized a market for baseball tees or raglan t-shirts. And oh, how it flourished! Bringing American culture into Europe has not always been fashion designers’ top choice for a course of action, but SikSilk dove right in and benefited from it.
The brand first saw its pieces on famous sportsmen like Lionel Messi and this helped them create a distinct brand image from other streetwear brands that worked with celebrities. It was only in 2016 that it took its success to the west, and the rest is history. What began as a ‘bedroom brand’ (that is to say that it started out of a bedroom) became a worldwide success.
Unlike the other successful clothing brands we’ll cover in this article, this one is dauntless enough to combine bold colors with ‘basics’ and streetwear. With its prominent logo in the initial years, it captured the attention and the interest of its ideal audience. What we love about SikSilk is that it is humble, comfortable, and of great quality.
What can we learn?
Sik Silk might be considered a more flashy alternative to some of its competitors. But the brand teaches us humility. It is a reminder that hard work, dedication, and passion pay off. Working with people that you genuinely appreciate, and working towards something you collectively believe in is the recipe for building the most successful clothing brands.
This streetwear clothing brand teaches us the importance of not being carried away. Despite its global success, it caters to audiences that want affordable options without splurging or compromising on quality. When you show you care, they return the favor!
ESSENTIALS CLOTHING
There’s absolutely no way you’ve missed this one in any list of successful clothing brands! ESSENTIALS brought in a fever with its launch and has become a streetwear pioneer around the globe. A business child of SSENSE, it has a wide audience between 18 and 40.
With its neutral colors, it became what its brand name suggests: closet essentials. With only six colors in their entire collection, they manage to create luxury streetwear that sells at prices that make us gawk!
It has white leggings at $550, a stunning black leather jacket at $8900, and headbands at $315. Needless to say, it has everyone ready with their wallets out. Fear of God recognized that their original luxury products just don’t make the cut for everyone. Its founder, Jerry Lorenzo wanted to appeal to a younger audience, reminding the youth of the importance of essential wardrobe pieces.
ESSENTIALS thus came about as a reminder that your basics are your most important investments. Fashion comes from comfort and quality, rather than design and flashiness. Launched in 2013 it has one of the best successful clothing brands stories.
The brand saw no shaky floors even during the pandemic. In fact, the pandemic might have boosted their brand awareness even more as more people invested in loungewear.
What can we learn?
ESSENTIALS gives us an important lesson in fashion. Pick your wardrobe essentials with care and attentiveness. Pick quality over hype and stick to the basics. With brands like these, there is a new wave of what a ‘statement piece’ is: simple.
To become the most successful clothing brand, you must pay attention to what the market needs, and not necessarily what the market thinks it wants. Know your audience and even the most basic items will get you to the top.
There’s no reason to try tacky things to produce ‘new’ designs and keep up with what is trending. Remember the true purpose of clothing and build on that.
Off-White
The next brand on our list is all the rage right now. The most striking feature of Virgil Abloh’s brand Off-White is that it is built on irony. It would be cruel to say that Abloh’s friendship with West or their internship with Fendi had anything to do with the successful clothing brands. Abloh creates a collection of memorable pieces that speak with lives of their own and they do one thing very well: humor.
A black dress with “Little Black Dress”, and a scarf with “Scarf” printed on them play with a defiant irony that amuses everyone. Prices started at $200 and shot up to $1000 during the resale.
Although Virgil Abloh, the first black man to design his own line at Louis Vuitton, is very controversial, it is not his controversies alone that provide free publicity for his brand. The brand appeals to a young, intelligent, and intellectual audience that perhaps sees more depth to the brand’s message than there is.
What can we learn?
Having collaborated with Nike, IKEA, and Queen Beyonce herself, Off-White teaches brand owners that simply having a product might not be enough. Create a sensation, create a movement, and most importantly, create emotion!
What Off-white does to make it onto the list of successful clothing brands is extremely simple. It states the obvious. But when you look beyond the surface, it becomes a running commentary on the current state of the fashion industry and its drowning in capitalism and materialism. What we can learn is that to be remembered, you’ve got to stand out. Not with your product, necessarily, but with your brand image.
Vetements
Next on our list of successful clothing brands to learn from is a relatively young brand, founded in 2014, that became the talk of the town sooner than you could believe. Vetements is a Swiss brand that uses the French word ‘vetements’ as its name, which means ‘clothing’. By keeping such a neutral name, they base their brand on the philosophy of clothing not having an identity but merely used to be worn.
Having front-row guests like Kanye West and Travis Scott during the 2015 show gave the brand a good push. When they launched, they sold out in a jiffy. The brand has bagged big names like Kendall Jenner, Rihanna, and believe it, Celine Dion.
Vetements did something we couldn’t imagine; combining streetwear with luxury. Demna Gvasalia, the co-founder had worked in fashion with brands like Louis Vuitton and Balenciaga. Despite their passion for fashion, they shared a great distaste for the state of the industry. Vetements was created as a philosophical doctrine that re-glorified the simplicity of streetwear.
This didn’t contribute to the discussions when deciding the retail prices, though. For streetwear, Vetements can drive quite the hole in your pocket, despite having one of the most inspiring successful clothing brands stories. Talks have been going on about expanding their niche audience to those that prefer more affordable clothing. We’ll keep our fingers crossed here.
What can we learn?
Despite their high prices, Vetements still manages to be sold out very quickly. That’s because it has an audience that understands the meaning behind the clothing. If you create something that has an important message behind it, no matter how simple, people who believe in that message will want your products.
Create something that people can relate with; something that makes them feel heard and seen. When your target audience believes your brand is for them, they become loyal and it is their appreciation of your brand that increases the value of your product. Vetements teaches us that simplicity is sometimes the right answer. Fashion is about more than style; it is a lifestyle.
Stüssy
This probably is one of the top 10 successful clothing brands of all time. Did you know it all actually started with surfboards? Shawn Stüssy used to first customize surfboards, and his customers soon realized his knack for art. As a marketing tactic, Stüssy began to produce t-shirts.
This was around the mid-/late-80s and the flashy styles had just begun to go out of style. People were looking for a more casual option when they realized how Stüssy’s graphic tees make great for wearing to the beach.
It was quickly picked up, and Stüssy became one of the first brands in the area for streetwear. It has persisted successfully through 38 long years of quick-changing fashion preferences.
What can we learn?
What began with surfboards revolutionized the world of fashion. Things don’t always start out the best way, and rarely go the way we expect. But good art will always be recognized and appreciated. Focus on creating desirable designs and don’t be afraid to try something that hasn’t been tried before. If it is not already trending, you can make it so cool that it does.
Conclusion
“Rome wasn’t built in a day” and neither will be your business. Take your time to experiment, grow, and keep learning as you do. Read about some successful clothing brands that you like and apply their strategies to your own business, so you can build upon what they established. These historic brands revolutionized fashion in their own ways, and so can you!