I started out doing everything on a custom scale and when that started paying the bills I started making more pieces.

I wanted to give people an experience. I wanted them to get their money's worth.

Even when I was just designing T-shirts people really gravitated to them.

I'm based in Atlanta so there weren't a lot of people to talk to about fashion because no one was really doing it on the scale that I wanted to do it. I had to do a lot of research on my own.

I didn't go to school for fashion, I didn't have anybody to teach me anything about fashion - that's all I knew how to do, graphic design.

The thing is you can be a great designer but you can also be lazy or not understand the other person's preferences or be more concerned about being a star than being good at what you do.

If you don't have customers to sell to, you can't commit to anything with textile factories or manufacturing factories because you don't know if you'll be able to sell the quantities they're asking you to fill.