If you visited the career office of a fashion school in the past decade, you were probably given some familiar nuggets of advice: build a varied résumé, don’t be too choosy about your first internships, network as much as possible through the channels provided to you — cold LinkedIn outreach, alumni networks, and university career fairs — and do not work for free (or at least, without school credit) because unpaid labor is both illegal and unfair.

All of these maxims are reasonable, if not highly recommended, but they’ve also become the baseline. In response to our current hiring economy — in which entry-level applicants vastly outnumber roles and applications are increasingly standardized with the use of AI — a new pillar of career advice has emerged: building your own, recognizable, “personal brand” is the most reliable way to stand out.

In today’s world, young people no longer need to physically get their work across the desk of a prominent buyer — Instagram, the fashion world’s favorite discovery tool, has turned the barrier to entry upside-down. However, fierce competition from within the attention economy makes it hard to get noticed and build a following today.

Devil in the details

Osman Ahmed, a writer and British Vogue contributing editor, entered the industry during the blogging era, which was still “marked by elitism and closed doors”. She built her career by assisting old-school editors (she recalls once asking her editor what to wear to a show and being snapped at: “No one is looking at you, dear”), filing breaking stories “diligently and quietly” from unglamorous newspaper newsrooms, and copywriting for brands to pay the bills, all the while growing a portfolio of physical clippings and quietly building a personal brand on social media.

Ahmed, who now publishes a Substack newsletter of her own, believes aspiring fashion creators and writers should use today’s platforms to their advantage: “I don’t think it’s essential to have a social media following. But at the same time, it would be stupid not to make use of platforms where people can discover your work.” She notes that when she was commissioning writers herself, she would scan Twitter for potential contributors: these didn’t need to be fully formed writers, just “someone with good ideas, who [is] open to learning.”

Briah Taubman, the designer behind emerging New York label Briah Artemis, knows the power of social media visibility. Taubman is a Parsons School of Design graduate, with internships at Anna Sui, Proenza Schouler, Eckhaus Latta, Batsheva, and Mirror Palais under her belt, and started her independent label in 2025. She’s had some major moments in recent years: Charli XCX wore her custom “Miss Should Be Headliner” printed sash dress at Coachella 2025, and Kylie Jenner posted in a Briah Artemis dress in June 2026.

Taubman’s page, which caught Jenner’s team’s attention, is a tightly curated portfolio, directionally influenced by her knowledge of editorial styling (Taubman is a freelance stylist). On her personal Instagram, which is still public, Taubman is social — posting funny pictures and going out with friends. “I realized [not to post freely] on my brand account because people do care, people do judge. You need to be thoughtful if you’re trying to send a message.” It paid off: months of shaping the visual language of her socials translated directly to media recognition from editors and creators: “I feel like I’m taken more seriously… A lot of fashion people tell me, ‘You are approaching having a new brand in an old-fashioned way, and we really respect it.’”