by station » Tue Sep 02, 2014 6:59 pm
I think there are a lot of design students who aren't out to found their own label. There was recently an article on MFA about how fast-fashion and how children of these families go to design school to help their parents business.
In addition, I think we look at a pretty small slice of clothing in general. Based on my experience, more people in college, high school, or young professionals (people who could be considering making design a choice for a career) know about and follow lookbook.nu, 'style' blogs, and magazines like Vogue etc and don't know who Rei, Raf, or Rick are. There are tons of clothes and brands presented in these places that probably never been mentioned on this forum that a lot of people like, wear, and are what inspire them to go into design. Some personal anecdotal evidence I have was when I was at a research fair, and a design student who was designing materials for waterproofing had never heard of stone island which seemed right up the alley of her research. Two other design students I've met were pretty much straight out of lookbook.nu. So yeah, small sample size, but I think starting your own label and creating/managing aesthetics is probably somewhat risky and not everyone's dream (this might change depending on the design school you're talking about).