Nia Thomas is not a girl boss. She’s actually grateful that the toxic phenomenon is in the past. She is a hustler, though. A few years ago these two titles would’ve felt synonymous — they might still be to the masses when you’re a 28-year-old Black woman running a burgeoning luxury fashion brand.
Building a long-lasting presence as a designer isn't always easy in an industry known for sartorial bandwagoning toward the flashiest presentation. How do you manufacture relevance in an oversaturated industry that is uneasily swayed and incredibly fickle towards newcomers? Moreover, how do you bypass the purgatory from obscurity to “emerging designer to watch?”
Nia Thomas knows exactly what it means to be on the road to emerging. With pieces shoppable in over 30 stores across the United States, Europe and the Caribbean, thousands of followers, and online sellers across the country, she isn’t an amateur. But, with only a newly-formed press team and three design team members hand sewing alongside her in Mexico City, she’s not quite reached the towering fashion house level yet, either.
“The overnight success takes ten years,” she tells Teen Vogue.
While she’s still a few years short of her first career decade, she’s garnered significant support from customers. Throughout her career growth she strategically put emphasis on the details in her designs and focused on promoting her pieces in person at varying pop-ups.
Thomas grew up in a monotonous suburban area of Long Island where the most palpable spark of creative artistry was hidden in her aunt’s shop. She spent her time after school hanging out at her aunt's alteration and vintage store learning how to sew. This is where her passion for design really came to fruition.
Through the guidance of her high school, she applied for a summer program at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. While her parents weren’t fond of how expensive the program was, it was dire in her eyes. She built a powerpoint presentation, threw on a thrifted — or potentially stolen from her sister — suit, and begged her way into attending. She spent 6 weeks before her senior year of high school learning the ins and outs of what it would take to succeed at fashion school. Of course, her job at Wendy’s underscored the entire summer, as she helped cover the cost of aspiring towards a career in fashion.
“People really don't talk about how much of a privilege it is to be in college and not have a job, or even to be able to take those unpaid internships that you know would look amazing on your resume,” she says. “I needed to have money to pay for the subway and food so I couldn’t do that.”
Thomas graduated from FIT the spring of 2017. She spent all four years designing, creating and working part time at pretty much “every single sh*tty restaurant in Manhattan you could think of.” She had to find a way to pay for her fashion supplies somehow. From 2018 to early 2020 Thomas had two stints working in a corporate fashion space designing childrenswear and swimwear. She never stopped creating her own work though. She’d sometimes sneak into FIT’s sewing lab and use their machines.
“Yes, you can buy an iron but it doesn’t hit the same as an industrial one,” she notes.
Before leaving her swimwear design role at Macy’s, her friends were convinced she could reach a larger market showing off her own designs. They demanded she put on her first post-college runway show, in a very Elle Woods “What, like it’s hard” manner.
“They said I needed to put on the show in the same tone as ‘why don't you just wake up, buy some milk and make cereal,’” she recalls. “Just being 22 years old and so naive I was like, ‘yeah, I could do that.’”
Thomas has always had a strong support system holding her up. So, with the help of her friends she decided to produce her first runway show that October of 2018, hand sewing, dying and stitching fabric together in her Brooklyn apartment alongside her community of friends. Her collection was inspired by her trip to Morocco and took place at the Phluid Project in SoHo.
“That’s the really great thing about being young and having a vision,” she says. “It's like you're so delusional, that you believe anything's possible. I kind of wish I still had some of that delusion.”
After the success of her first show seeing how many people were interested in purchasing her clothes, she tried expanding further by sending out placement requests to high end stores. “I didn't know what a line sheet was,” she recalls. “I had no idea what I was doing, but I was just emailing the top stores around the world. Like Bergdorf Goodman is going to take me seriously with my five SKUs (Stock Keeping Unit) that were hand sewn in my Bushwick bedroom.”
And while she hadn't heard back from these places, she kept designing.
Early 2020 she was furloughed from her job which gave her more time to focus solely on her personal collections. The pandemic ensued and she’d noticed an uptick in sales, which enlivened her. No one was supposed to be traveling, but her pieces were being bought.
At the end of May in 2020 everyone sat at home reading about the untimely murder of George Floyd, which then was followed by months of protesting in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. This was a catalyst for the fashion industry and its top leaders were forced to reflect on their diversity malpractices. This led to an overload of public and potentially performative support towards Black designers.
“A lot of stores that I had been contacting for months were finally getting back to me being like, ‘we're doing the 15 percent pledge and we want to carry more black designers, send us your line sheet,’” Thomas says. “I just remember thinking at the time, ‘Is this what it's like to go through the world like a white man?' I’m now having all of these opportunities given to me but is it just because of what I look like and also people’s guilt?”
She started receiving features in several publications, customer support and a ton of new followers. Thomas decided to use this moment to set her up for the years to follow, mostly because she knew this energy would eventually have an end.
“I knew at the time that it was unsustainable,” she says. “I was like, ‘this isn't gonna last forever, but I'm gonna milk this for as long as I can.’ I used all the money from those sales to start working with a factory and really making things in bulk.”
Thomas’s work is notably known for its knitwear and elevated basics. Her collections are handmade in small batches in Mexico City and are majorly created with hand-dyed yarn. Through her many collections exploring a life of ease no matter the location, you’re buying into a world that’s focused on mindful and sustainable fashion. Her work feels intrinsically connected to the ocean and the subtle breeze that exists when you’re still, focused solely on what’s in front of you. That luxury is felt through the impeccable stitching and designs across her website, reminding us that we should never dream of labor — life is meant to be lived outside.
As a young designer gelling together accessibility and luxury is no simple feat though. Thomas constantly is analyzing the prices of her pieces, mostly because she was severely underpricing in the beginning. The quality of the product and the price weren’t aligned and many stores told her that. She learned the hard way when she was essentially losing money as she started the wholesale process.
“So at the time, I was selling tops for less than $100 and I had this scarcity mindset of ‘no one's gonna buy this,’ but it's handmade," she says. "It's made with the best materials. I need to be able to sell this at a price where I can afford to keep going and hire people.”
Luxury has always been unattainable for a lot of people. Shoppers can spend months saving up for that thousand dollar Louis Vuitton purse, Bottega shoe or Gucci shirt. With household brands like the aforementioned, no one questions their high price point that continues to rise over the years. But, when it comes to young Black designers, the question of price always comes into play. From Telfar to Hanifa, Black designers have been criticized — mostly in online forums like Twitter — about having steep prices. Whether it be from the accessibility of these designers on social media or their newness in the industry, shoppers appear to be less forgiving of Black designers having higher price points for their items than they are of other luxury brands. Thomas is battling a similar issue as she navigates running her brand.
“I would get into so many fights with people in the DMS and they're just like, ‘I want to buy this but I can't afford it,’” Thomas says. “It feels like they’re saying ‘well I can't really yell at anyone at Chanel because they're such a big brand. They're not going to listen. But here you are and I can have this conversation with you.’ It's just so mind-boggling.”
When you’re young in fashion the goalpost is constantly shifting – trends are changing, shopping habits shift and it’s no longer enough to have one viral moment. You have to be agile on your feet and ready to pivot. No one can prepare you for the day you’ll finally emerge from underneath the many adversities floating in the sartorial abyss.
Thomas is prepared for the shift though and she’s doing everything she can to one day be floating next to the big players. She went from a team of one with many unpaid friends happy to help push her to the top. Now, she has a growing team ready to bolster her through the ether.
“You can make a beautiful product but if no one knows you exist, does it even matter? It's like if a tree fell in a forest but no one heard it. Did it really happen?” she says.
Notoriety is social currency for fashion folk and awards like the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund sit at the top of the list for many designers hoping to become someone to watch.
“I applied two years ago to the CFDA Fashion Fund,” Thomas says. “I obviously didn’t get it. I think last year I didn't apply because I was working on the application and I was like ‘if I don't believe that I can win this, why is anyone else going to believe it either?’ I'm trying to work up to that point because like so many other small designers, we all need help, we all need that thirty thousand dollars, we all need that mentorship, that establishment of people saying ‘hey, this is who's next in fashion and we're putting all of our resources behind them.’”
But that visibility doesn’t always pay the bills. Elena Velez, a 2022 CFDA emerging designer winner, has openly spoken out about how she still struggles financially even after being awarded all these high-profile fashion grants. Thomas jokingly shared that she saw someone say these grants can sometimes feel like winning America’s Next Top Model. “You’re hot one day and gone the next.” And that is the case in fashion. Candles burn quickly and you’ve got to find a way to break through the noise and cement yourself as someone here to stay.
Thomas is focused on doing that by building a secured community of believers in the brand. She spends a lot of her time traveling to different cities hosting pop ups showcasing her collections. During the summer of 2022 she was hosting a pop-up at her friend Alex’s vintage store Kalimera in Williamsburg doing her usual looped reciting of: “Hi I’m Nia, I’m hosting a pop-up. You should come inside and check it out” to passerbyers on the street. She’d gotten so deep into her rhythm she hadn’t noticed supermodel Bella Hadid was the person she was talking to. Bella came into the store, stayed for an hour and tried on several designs from Thomas’s collection. Thomas was honest with her — something she thinks Bella appreciated — telling her which items she actually believed looked good on her and which didn’t. Bella left that day purchasing several pieces.
“After that happened, I went home and created a list. I said ‘these are all the people I want to see in Nia Thomas one day,’” she says.
And while Bella hasn’t stepped out in one of Nia’s designs just yet, that gracious moment felt like years of hard, hands-on work realized.
“You have to see it to believe it,” Thomas says. “That shared moment with Bella is a stepping stone to what’s next, I know it. What I want the universe wants for me as well.”
