We were lucky to catch up with Peta Tornaros recently and have shared our conversation below.

Peta, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

Having worked in the hospitality service industry since high school, I realised that I wasn’t fully ready to enter the fashion industry upon receiving my bachelors degree in Design: Fashion & Textiles in Sydney, Australia in 2017. So, to buy myself some more time, I moved to New York, my dream city, to gain industry experience via internships (Enter Devil Wears Prada Montage!).

After moving in 2018, I immediately started a production internship at a small “instagram popular” label, earning close to nothing. To supplement this, the designers of the brand helped me get a service industry job as a server at a small Australian cafe/restaurant in Manhattan — for which I’m incredibly grateful.

Whilst I climbed my way up to General Manager, on the side selling pieces through my website and a few stockists, making new garments — what I’d moved here to do — began to take a backseat. The manager role became increasingly stressful, placing immense pressure on my mental health; I was feeling incredibly lost as a creative. By March of this year, I’d had enough: I formally stepped down as General Manager of the restaurant, a place of comfort for me since relocating to a new country, to ultimately focus on making clothes again.

It’s been now a few months since making this decision, and whilst I still doubt myself often, I know this was the right decision for my health and soul. It’s a risk that has directly enabled me to focus on what I’m passionate about!

Peta, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

For me there was truly no other career path that I ever considered outside the design world!

My brand, Peta Tornaros, specialises in making size flexible garments and accessories with repurposed garments/deadstock fabric yardage.

I think a designer’s main job is problem solving. Making pieces from pre existing materials and educating people on the harms of fast fashion is particularly important because, by nature, the fashion industry is an environmentally harmful industry. As designers, we need to focus on creative solutions and alternatives to alleviate the harmful nature of the industry we are working in. And, as a bonus, working inside a given constraint (for instance, using all repurposed fabric) can be an invigorating challenge whose result might be new technique you hadn’t even considered.

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

Fashionopolis: The Price of Fast Fashion and the Future if Clothes by Dana Thomas is so incredible, and should be a mandatory read in schools.
It breaks down fashion consumerism and simply lays out thoroughly the destructive nature of the fashion and textile industry. It allows us to truly understand where our clothes come from.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

Shop small businesses!!!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.petatornaros.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/peta_tornaros

Image Credits

Hunter Rohlfs