Interview Georgia Dant, Founder of Marfa Stance
After honing her skills working at luxury brands for more than 15 years, including Rag & Bone and Burberry under Christopher Bailey, London College of Fashion alumna Dant used her considerable knowledge to identify a gap in the market. Her dream was to create a meaningful brand, built on sustainable and ethical values. In 2019 she did just that, launching Marfa Stance. Functional, adaptable and sustainable, its utilitarian womenswear is loved by us and the likes of Sienna Miller and Caroline Issa for its buildable elements and seasonless style. It’s also expertly made in family-run factories throughout Italy.
Here, on the eve of 100 designers presenting their collections at London Fashion Week, Dant shares her experience and advice on starting your own fashion line.
THE WICK: Talk us through a typical Monday.
Georgia Dant: Mondays are always the busiest day for us. We always start with our team meeting in the morning where we discuss what’s coming up that week, our stock levels and customer pre-orders, our social plan, our Marfa muses and newsletter. After our meeting, we get to work. We thankfully always have quite a few orders to carefully hand-wrap and send out to customers, and I usually am on calls with our PR team and graphic designer. Monday afternoons are when we do all our fit reviews with our technical team.
TW: How do you fuel your creativity while balancing the responsibilities of being a brand founder?
GD: Creativity is intrinsic to my role as designer of Marfa Stance. I am not designing for fashion, I am designing to offer our customers products that are solutions to their lifestyles whoever they are and for wherever they go – the fusion of style and function. However, I find creativity in equal measure through the role of founder and the daily problem solving that is required and integral to setting up any business or venture. I have to be resourceful as well as industrious with limited resources and I think this forces and fuels creative thinking in both design and running a business.
TW: Who are the muses that inspired your label?
GD: I am inspired by real people. My muses are women and men I respect who have a story to tell, strong values, a point of view and their own sense of creative and individual style and self-expression.
TW: What’s your advice to someone looking to launch their own label?
GD: I think the journey to launch a brand is very different for each person. My advice would be to have confidence and believe in yourself and your ideas. I think you don’t have to have all the answers when you initially start out, but I think you do have to be ready to think on your feet, adapt and be OK with failure and have humility. It is one of the hardest things that you will ever do, but one of the most rewarding.
