Hello and welcome to Business Daily, this week we're taking a look at the
global fashion industry Kim Kardashian, Lizzo, Gigi Hadid. What do all of these
women have in common? They're all global celebrities, and the fashion world pays
close attention to what they're wearing and they've all been wearing the Di Petsa brand.
Di Petsa a fairly new kid on the block created only four years ago by Greek fashion designer
Dimitra Petsa. She graduated in 2018 from Central Saint Martins University in London
and created her brand just a year later. I grew up with my grandmother in Athens,
Greece, and she was a seamstress and a tailoring teacher. So ever since I can remember myself,
I was amongst the scraps of fabric. And now seeing my grandmother create, you know, bespoke
garments for all these women and so I always knew that I wanted to continue this in my life.
She's recently showcased her designs at London Fashion Week for a second time and is dressing
celebrities all around the world. So how do you go from new graduate to couture fashion designer
in such a short time? Today, we're going to find out how. The luxury fashion industry is a pretty
robust one, worth close to $400 billion worldwide and expected to grow at a steady rate of 6% each
year for the foreseeable future. Relying on high income consumers, luxury fashion performs better
than other areas of the industry in times of high inflation and recession, a pretty safe
place to be then if you can get there. So how do you get there? First, you need to get noticed.
My emblematic piece is the wet look. So this is what we were known for from the start. And
basically the wet look is a technique that I developed when I was doing my masters, which
makes a garment look wet, even though it isn't. If you cry in public, you have to hide it. If
you sweat in public, you have to hide it. If you breastfeed in public, you have to hide it. It is
almost as if our watery emotions are censored. So what I wanted to show with this technique,
the wet look technique, as we call it, is, you know, make a woman look like she’s just drenched
in water. And it's a celebration of the fact that we come from water and we are full of water
in our body and that's something that should be celebrated and it's very beautiful and spiritual.
It was that wet look dress that got the Di Petsa brand noticed by celebrities across the globe. It
meant Dimitra’s clothes were appearing on Shakira in her music videos on the red carpet at the Met
Gala with Lizzo and even on beauty adverts for L'Oreal where Zendaya wore a Di Petsa address.
We have done the pregnancy reveal of Gigi Hadid, so I think that was a big moment when we did that
because that photo went very viral, obviously, and we did the dress for Kim Kardashian for her
campaign. Her team just got in contact with us and they asked us to make a few designs. So I did,
and then we had the back and forth with her stylist and getting feedback or changes to
the design specifications. And that's how we do it. So basically it is my design,
but it is a lot of back and forth between me and the stylist or me and the talent.
How does having a celebrity wear one of your dresses, or a garment
that you've made, affect the business? I think it's quite surprising because I
think a lot of people assume that if you dress a celebrity immediately, you're just going to
start to get loads and loads of requests. But I think, for example, with my brand,
because we are a sustainable brand that supports slow fashion and we make a lot of things bespoke,
you know, we use a lot of craftsmanship, so our pieces are very special. So with some celebrities,
it has worked very well where, you know, we get loads and loads of emails of people trying to get
a custom look with other celebrities, you know, maybe we'll get one or two. So I think it's not
how people envisioned it that every time you dress a celebrity, that immediately translates
into sales. And actually oftentimes what the people say in the industry is not only about
the sales. Brand awareness is actually a very big part of it, because maybe someone will get
to know your brand and they're not going to buy from you now. But even the fact that they know of
your brand may be later down the road they might. Celebrity interest doesn't always lead to cold,
hard sales, but getting that brand exposure is important. So how do you build a high-end fashion
brand from scratch in order to start that journey? My first commission was a wedding dress for
a friend of a friend and then another dress. And I really built it so slowly,
like just from my living room. You're needing to buy fabric,
spend time designing and needing money to live in those early stages. How did that work in terms of
financing the brand that you were starting? For sure, for sure. So I think it's just very
important in the beginning to just know that you're not gonna really make a lot of money.
Like for me, when I was able to afford my rent, I think that was really a big
moment for me and I didn't really care about anything else. And yeah, just any commission
and any work that I got, I would just put that straight back to the business basically.
Did it just work on a case where you had a friend of a friend that wanted a dress
and then it was like word of mouth that you were making what you were making and then
more people came to you, or did you have to do marketing or how did it all work?
I had, you know, a very clear vision of the brand and what I wanted to portray visually. I
had also studied fine art, and I think I was quite comfortable with also being the creative director,
let's say. So I really utilised that and I would just take photos with my phone, you know,
nothing fancy or like I would collaborate with a photographer who just wanted to shoot my
stuff for free just for their portfolio. And I would put all that up on Instagram. People
would see from Instagram or from interviews with smaller magazines I was doing, and then it kind
of slowly snowballed from there. I didn't have the funds to pay for special marketing
or something like this. When I started, I had zero contacts. I wasn't in the fashion world.
Self-promotion and a few interviews in some small fashion magazines gets you so far. But
when you're growing a business, there comes a time where you need to recruit staff. And that
was the next hurdle for Dimitra to overcome. I got one person who was working with me at
the British Fashion Council, she started to work with me as my brand manager. Together we started
building it. Then I hired one seamstress, then another. Then we had to go to a bit
of a bigger studio space. You know, you have to just take the right steps when the moment comes.
You're the designer at heart. Was it difficult to maybe take on a
bit of the business side of things? It's definitely a challenge for sure.
It's not something that, you know, when you're studying fine art and you're getting so inside the
artistic process, you never think, oh, you know, taxes and VAT and, you know, export, you know,
import. I actually really like running a business. I think that's not very common amongst, you know,
my friends' designers. But I actually really enjoy sitting down with a brand manager and
making business plans and making predictions and seeing what is the right business step. At every
point in time, I'm quite switched on in the business side as well, which I think you have
to. There have definitely been times where I have struggled emotionally to take on all this burden
from the point of you want to be the best at everything. So I want to be the best businesswoman
and the best artist and the best designer. And I am actually very involved in every single thing,
even the movement direction that we do for the shows, even the music that we do for the shows,
the, you know, the campaigns, like, everything. I am very involved in everything and I make a lot
of those decisions. Right now in my life, I'm at a place where I have accepted this. I'm going to
be working all day, every day, but it's my life. I love what I do and I get so much satisfaction
and beauty and so many beautiful relationships through it. So I have made my peace with that.
I guess there will come a time, though, as the brand grows where you just can't possibly be
involved in absolutely everything and you have to start giving those jobs out to other people.
Of course. But I think that's the
part of starting to let go of control as well. For example, we recently got a studio manager,
so that was a big burden, you know, off of my shoulders. And then maybe as we grow bigger,
I might get, you know, designer assistants because now I design everything by myself. I think what
I have a lot of faith in is just taking it as it comes and having that, you know, self-belief that,
okay, when the moment is right, I'm going to take the right step because I think sometimes
people can get stuck in a situation because we are afraid of change or we are afraid to lose control.
Mentoring has also played a part in helping Dmitry get to where she is today. She's part
of the Newgen at the British Fashion Council, an initiative to support upcoming designers. As
part of this program, she's been able to get support put on shows at London Fashion Week.
They provide me with a space to do my catwalk, and they also provide the production team. So
they are really there to give you their infrastructure. But then everything else,
let's say who you invite, you know, the creative vision, the lighting, everything, the set design,
this all has to come from my brand. It's basically a long process, I start a few months before every
show and I like to work at everything at the same time. So while I'm designing the clothes,
I am working with a musician on the show music and I'm also working with the set designer on the set.
And I'm also working with a light designer on the lights. So it's all at the same time. It's
definitely not an inexpensive project. Everything really starts to add up very quickly. You know,
just the models - it's a huge cost. And then if you add production and,
you know, just everything starts stack up. Appearing at Fashion Week is clearly a big
investment, but it's also the place to get the exposure you need as a brand.
So what happens is that brands will show during Fashion Week and maybe you show in New York
Fashion Week, Milan Fashion Week, you know, it doesn't matter, but you do a show in Fashion
Week and then you take all of your collection and you go to a country, usually it's Paris,
that's where everybody goes and you do what's called a showroom. And what you do there is you
have all your clothes on rails. You have a fitting model. You have, you know, a couple of mannequins
and buyers come to meet you there in person and see the clothes in person. And sometimes
they make a selection there or, you know, they ask you questions about quantities and different
colourways. And basically that's where they go and they do, in quotes, the shopping for the store.
That must be quite nerve wracking. Definitely it is. And it's also very funny because
they, you know, have so many brands to see. So you have to be very quick and you have to especially
if they want to see everything on the model. And you know, you can't have five models, you
only have one or two. So you have to, you know, very quickly change the clothes on the models so
that they can see the next and then they see then they're like, okay, next one, next one, next one.
So it's a lot of time spent in the changing room, just trying to change a dress as fast as possible.
Yeah, it's like a race. It's a race that's worth running in as Dimitra now
has her brand stocked in some big retailers. In the UK, we have Selfridges and LNCC carry a
selection of our pieces that we show in Fashion Week. So, for example, if I show in February,
the Autumn Winter Show, Selfridges is going to make their selection and buy a few things
in quantities from the collection, and then they're gonna have all this product delivered
in time for the winter season of next year and they're going to have it in store. Some brands
rely only on direct to consumer. For me, I do both, and I think that what has really helped
with the cashflow because when you get retailers, you actually don't get to see that money for many
months. So you start the production of, let's say, you know, a huge order, but you only get the
money for that order when you deliver the pieces and sometimes depending on the terms, but some
retailers don't even give you the money once they receive the garments, they will give it to you in
a few months after they have already sold it. That’s a long time to wait, isn't it?
Exactly. So that's a very big period of time where you actually don't have,
you know, a constant stream of money coming in. And that is where direct to consumer has really
helped us, the money coming in. So what's next for Di Petsa?
I think we just really want to grow and expand our territories. We are very much a Europe and
America based, but we would like to expand in your territories and I think I would like to have more
brand awareness and get people to really engage with the concept and the ethos of the brand,
because I think we are known for making these beautiful garments, but there is
a very rich history and a lot of thought that goes behind it. So yeah, I would like to have
more of an opportunity to showcase that through different shows, different artistic exhibitions.
Are there certain parts of the world you've got your eye on specifically that you'd like
to be known in and be able to sell to? I would love to be more in Asia and the
Middle East and yeah, just go global, I guess. The sheer population is so huge, especially
in the Asian market. So different territories have a different kind of consumer. For example,
I sell different kinds of pieces in America versus Europe. In the US, they really love the
special extravagant pieces, so they really like our long wet look dresses, things with a lot of
jewellery in it. And, you know, just this very, very, you know, shouty pieces. Whereas I think in
Europe we're a bit more low key. So we like, you know, things that perhaps don't scream as much.
Whether Dimitra is creating clothes for the US market or the more reserved Europeans,
she's certainly proving that you can become a successful fashion designer even with no
contacts and not much experience in the industry. That's all from today's episode
of Business Daily, produced and presented by me, Hannah Mullane. Thanks for listening.