We were lucky to catch up with Bria Blunt recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Bria thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights 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.

My relentless demand for creative freedom has perpetually required tons of risks in my life. And in a way, each of them has built upon the previous one, and only increased my risk threshold, leading me to this current moment, where I’m currently building a five-piece capsule fashion collection to debut three weeks from now, and it may be one of the scariest, most exhausting, painful, elating, and important experiences to which I’ve committed, to date!

For as long as I can remember, the most important things to me have been my faith, my family, and my creative freedom. But in a culture that teaches us to reduce risk, acquiring that last one has always been a struggle.

As early as high school, I vividly remember a guidance counselor telling me to try architecture and choose a more “realistic” affordable college to attend instead of a design school in New York City. I leap and attend the world’s #1 fashion university.

Then three semesters into university, I was afraid to admit that I wanted to switch my major to ‘Integrated Design’, an open-ended degree that exposed me to more classes, but cut me off from important industry networks. The standard fashion program looked cookie-cutter, and at the time I couldn’t see a way to proceed with room to explore alternative ways fashion could exist. Upon my peers inevitably finding out, a very talented classmate who went on to win that year’s Parsons Womenswear Designer of the Year, looked intently at me and asked, “Why are you transferring out of fashion? You’re so good at it.” I tentatively switched out, and the next two years I spent experimenting with everything I could – metalsmithing, leatherwork, embroidery, textile print design, fine arts, programming, 3D modeling, web design – only to find myself at another fork in the road after graduation.

My skills are all over the place; do I want to stay in New York and network my way into a real job at the fashion center of the world, or move to be closer to my family where I know no one and the closest thing to a fashion center is inventory work at Buffalo Exchange. I move west apprehensively, but trusting a way can be paved.

Four years passed and while my family relationships were the strongest they’d ever been, my career/creative life was questionable at best. I’m picking up art teacher and random graphic design gigs at sign shops, tending to a YouTube channel and a self-made meetup group, and volunteering at local theatre groups, all while wondering if I’d made a giant mistake and should’ve just followed the script – if not in high school back when setting the course for careers, at least when in college when I had the opportunity to get a reliable relevant job with established brands. I was 25 at the time, feeling like I’d already failed at life, and willing to now take drastic measures to be the artist I always imagined myself to be. I decided to live out of my vehicle. I reasoned the significantly reduced expenses would afford me the time and space to figure out what to make of my jack-of-all-trades tendencies.

One can imagine the obvious and almost comical reasons this was a feat like no other I’d pursued. Accruing a bit of student debt and moving to a place where the jobs aren’t as sexy sounds cute compared to the anxiety of sleeping through the night in a parking lot as a young solo woman. But surprisingly, it took a while to convince me back into a conventional safe living condition. Why? Because my commitment to creative freedom was more important than being comfortable.

I can often get embarrassed reminiscing and retelling stories of when I used to live in a car, but it’s one of the most important things that happened to me because now when I’m afraid to pursue some new huge creative project (like this fashion brand debut), I can say to myself “well worst case scenario, I end up homeless”, and that no longer scares me. It’s what motivated me to quit my job (after two years of rebuilding my fashion design confidence, another risk!). It’s what motivated me to pursue freelance design with only a couple of months’ savings put away. It’s what motivated me today, with *finally* starting my own fashion brand – one of the most expensive, unfunded, non-utilitarian, frivolous creative hobbies a person could have. But I love it and I know it’s my purpose.

Being a creative is nothing but perpetual risk. Often creativity cannot and will not bend into the confines of planning, forecasting, budgeting, etc. But when you know you were born to do something, when nothing else – even the most responsible, lucrative, safe life one could live – will quite satisfy your soul, you have a responsibility to pursue what will.

Bria, 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?

My fashion sensibilities have always been stirred up in me from a very early age with my family supporting every creation curiosity I ever had. I was constantly drawing, making clothes for my dolls, making videos, and the like. My parents supported my creative desires, so long as I went after them with excellence. I had the luxury of not only having a slightly older cousin after which I could pattern pursuing a fashion degree, but my budding talents got me a full ride to a fine arts high school, where I was required to learn photography, printmaking, sculpture, video, and more.

As a solopreneur today – alongside kicking off my fashion brand, I offer textile print design and print engineering to small brands. When people understand the potential resting in textile prints and print engineering – it deeply empowers brands to stand out with their designs and offer something unique and high-end without the commitment of high production MOQs or even extensive development. This is possible because I’m able to help designers visualize, design, and altar their garments in 3D, shrinking the time between idea and conception, and without shrinking waste. This is how brands like Farmrio, Selkie, and Zimmerman can keep the consumer engaged without creating tons of inventory that could end up in a landfill later.

Because of my vast experience with so many creative mediums, I’m able to uniquely assist my clients from a much more comprehensive vantage point. I’m not merely satisfying a brief and passing the buck to the next expert. I’m asking questions like, “Does this textile print satisfy your brand’s voice and house codes?”, or “This pattern is good, but is it production friendly?”, and “Are these 3D renders you want for marketing in conversation with your current Instagram audience?”.

And because I never let finances have the final say on my motivations – something I’m most proud of that propelled me into entrepreneurship in the first place – I’m completely freed up to serve people to the fullest extent, however, it is genuinely needed.

What I stress most with my creative work and with my clients is the importance of not limiting yourself. Creativity is not just about creating beautiful things, it’s about solving gigantic problems – getting what’s in our massive imaginative heads into real life, bringing heaven down to earth – and the act of doing that is one of life-giving awe and wonder.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

One of the biggest lessons I had to unlearn was that, “some people are just lucky”. I used to see the world loosely split into people who got lucky with things like talents, gifts, money, fame, etc, and people who weren’t. It’s a tempting mindset for anyone to adopt, but it was particularly attractive to me because I genuinely felt I specifically was “one of the lucky ones”. My creative gifts had been affirmed so much at such a young age that I felt like money and fame from them were virtually a birthright, and I was foolishly confused at different points in my early creative career when I didn’t immediately go viral or “get discovered” in some way.

There’s no single moment my paradigm shifted on this, as it’s been a slow burn of a revelation for sure. I heard a couple of quotes and sermons about the power of slow fruitful growth when staying rooted in one thing over a long time. I listened to countless stories of other creatives and influencers talking about their journey and how so much work happened in the early days when no one really cared or even understood what they were doing yet.

I’d hit walls in my creative journey and one day I’d heard in some random YouTube video the narrator say, “Treat it like you’re a serious pro”. I think I just got tired of making excuses and realized that I – nor anyone else – is entitled to success. Success (real, sustained success) is earned, and all the people I look up to didn’t magically appear where they are as overnight sensations. I went to visit my alma mater and realized how pervasive the idea that “true creativity” is incompatible with capitalist consumer culture and you can’t make money without selling out. I just decided one day that mindset (ironically) lacked the imagination to reconcile the compatibility of making a great living and pursuing a creative passion, that I alone am accountable for how successful or unsuccessful I am, that while I acknowledge I am gifted, I am responsible for watering those gifts, and that I need to take my efforts more seriously.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer. I’ve read and listened to this book over four times. It’s relevant to anyone living in this contemporary age marked by perpetual technological progress and consumer culture.

The book’s thesis invites readers to interrogate the speed at which we consume, create, live, measure, and communicate in our lives; and offers insights on how (and why) to resist this frenetic pace so that we do not self-implode.

These ideas are incredibly important to me not just as an individual, but as an overarching ethos I need to inspire in others whenever possible. It’s not popular to admit in any sector and especially not in fashion, but at a minimum, so much of what we produce globally is wildly unnecessary (insofar as meeting people’s necessities goes), but rising incomes and inflating lifestyles demand continual fast-paced production, and it affects every area of our lives. And while responsibility lies at the corporate level, it also lies at the level of the individual. It’s incredibly important to me to be an agent of calm, reasonable, *sustainable* production in my pursuits – keeping what is luxurious in perspective of the bigger picture (i.e. fashion) – as when I lead others, that sway absolutely impacts others’ lives locally and globally.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://gatheringbleu.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gatheringbleu/
• Other: https://www.briaalebleu.com