Creative to Creative: Asya Ter-Hovakimyan
Navigating through the creative industry isn’t as hard as you think, take it from Asya, she’s doing it!
Asya in her studio - Image by Sakina Sule Ali
For the first ‘Creative to Creative’ segment, I sat down with fashion designer and owner of OMNISS: Asya Ter-Hovakimyan as she shares her experience so far as a young entrepreneur in the fashion industry.
Asya is a graduate from the 2020 class of Womenswear at the London College of Fashion. However, that’s not where her creative journey began. With Armenian roots, she pinpoints her journey as a fashion creative to moments in her childhood where she would upcycle a lot of her clothes until she learnt the proper skills to be able to make her own. She grew from cutting up her grandpa’s old shirt and turning it into a skirt, to working for herself in her studio space, growing her label “Omniss”, which she co-founded with her now spouse during her time as a student. As a young business owner, she picked up many tips and tricks which she very generously shared for creatives like yourself to learn from.
To begin the list of advice for creatives, finances must be addressed. As a young business owner in a creative industry Asya stresses that “creative businesses are still businesses, and they still need the building blocks of any other business”. According to a report by the UN, the creative economy industries contribute over £1.6 trillion annually and provide almost 50 million jobs worldwide. These statistics show just how lucrative the creative industry is and therefore how important it is for creatives to master their finances.
Asya working on some designs in her studio - Image by Sakina Sule Ali
“I think people underestimate how important finance is because we are always taught and told that, it's all down to creativity, and being original and unique.” Asya Ter-Hovakimyan
As a creative, especially for freelancers, you may try to get advice from multiple sources, however there are certain myths about the creative industry that we aim to bust. So rather than asking Asya for a key piece of advice, we instead asked what advice she wished people would stop giving young creatives when starting out in their respective industries. Her answer was nothing short of controversial, but not far from the truth; stop telling people to just follow their passion. She described this as “a trend that people just follow their passion without any actual skill, knowledge or investment into it. And especially fashion because it's seen as frivolous and something that is not requiring extra training or skills”. With the social media age we are living in where influencers often deviate into creative roles such as designing clothing or creating music, it unfortunately feeds into the unrealistic idea that just anyone can, or perhaps should pursue a career in fashion for example simply because they like to dress up. Asya implores the next generation of creatives to value craftsmanship in their creativity to ensure an ecosystem of sustainability in the creative industry.
“Yeah, do what you love, but you have to do it well” - Asya Ter-Hovakimyan
Asya at her sewing machine - Image by Sakina Sule Ali
As you may have already realised on your creative journey, it’s not the most straightforward industry. Multiple leaders in creative industries came from multiple paths before arriving to their destination as creatives. For example, Manolo Blahnik began with degrees in law, languages and art before starting his brand in 1973. Even then, he admits that it took almost a decade for him to feel that he had begun to master his craft. Although Asya agrees that “it’s pretty challenging to be optimistic, but also realistic”. However, as a creative with an established business, she left us with a note of hope.
“I'm a big believer that success is not like one destination that you arrive at, and you suddenly feel super successful, but more like the small challenges that you overcome on a day to day basis that pile up and then suddenly one day you realise actually, I climbed to a certain point on this mountain, because I overstepped this stones and all the little bits that were on my way and I came this far.”
