The Hardest Part of Growing in Fashion Isn’t the Work — It’s the Silence

I used to think the hard part was getting in.

Getting your foot in the door.
Getting noticed.
Getting someone — anyone — to take a chance on you.

And for a while, that was the hard part.
Finding jobs, pitching yourself, building experience from nothing — it took all of me.
All of my energy. All of my belief. All of my time.

But what nobody warned me about — what no one ever talked about — was what came next.

Not the moment you finally “make it” (which, by the way, rarely feels like it looks).
But the season that comes after the door opens.
The quiet space. The strange stillness. The silence.

That’s the part I was never taught how to navigate.
And it’s the part that nearly made me quit.

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What silence actually looks like in freelance fashion

It’s not what you’d expect.
It’s not dramatic. It’s not loud. It’s not even painful at first.
It’s subtle. Creeping. Unnamed.

It looks like:

• Getting booked on a job and hearing nothing after.

• Sending off a pull request and getting a one-word reply.

• Working 12-hour days as an assistant with no idea if you’re doing it “right.”

• Getting a yes, then nothing. Getting a no, then no reason.

• Watching your work go live, then wondering if anyone even saw it.

There’s no manager.
No mentor.
No one to debrief with.
No structure to guide what the next level looks like.

So instead of growing, you start spinning.