What defines Australian style in 2026? Who really holds influence? And in an industry obsessed with virality, is authenticity still fashion’s greatest currency?

Over aperitivo at the aptly stylish Sean’s Panaroma, we gathered a designer, agent, make-up artist, publicist and model-creator for an intimate roundtable on the state of Australian fashion.

It was a rare peek behind the curtain thanks to a prominent and influential group whose work in, and understanding of, the country’s fashion industry is profound, varied and spans decades.

The Roundtable

Megha Kapoor (moderator): creative director, writer, Inprint founder and former editor of Vogue India.

Sean Brady: make-up artist.

Robyn Catinella: managing director and founder of fashion PR, communications and wholesale agency Catinella.

Charlotte Hicks: founder and creative director of fashion label ESSE Studios.

Te Manahou Mackay: creative director, producer and model.

Doll Wright: model manager at Priscilla’s Model Management.

On Australian Style – What Is It Exactly?

Megha Kapoor: Gab Waller, the Australian-born fashion sourcer whose business is built around finding hard-to-find luxury pieces for an international clientele, recently described Australian style as "very undone" and "very much thrown together". Does that description resonate with you, and what do you think defines Australian style today?

Te Manahaou Mackay: There’s a difference between the Australian fashion industry and Australians more broadly. Fashion people are quite stoic in their clothes and quite serious, whereas broader Australia is much more literal in its style. It's also quite rigid and gendered compared to other countries, where there’s a lot more fluidity in fashion. I think that's reflective of the culture here too.

Megha: So quite normcore when it comes to the general public?

Doll Wright: Compare Australia to somewhere like Denmark, which is much more compact and where people have far greater access to one another. Australia is vast. We live in a bubble within the fashion industry. I went to a rural boarding school and have lots of friends who still live in regional Australia. They’re incredibly stylish in their own way. It might not be what the fashion industry deems fashionable at any given moment, but they have a very strong sense of personal style. Because Australia is so large – from coastal communities to major cities to regional towns – each of those pockets has its own aesthetic.

Megha: Do you think there’s a casualness to Australian style?

Sean Brady: I think there’s a casualness because we’re a lifestyle-centric country. People dress in ways that make sense for how they actually live. People are up at 6am, exercising, grabbing coffee and getting on with their day. That naturally influences the way we dress. When people talk about fashionable cities like New York, I think that, relative to the size of our population, Australia has just as many highly engaged, fashion-conscious people. I don’t think we’re fundamentally different from anywhere else. Even the way people dress for the gym here is considered. There’s a fashion person's version of it, and there’s everyone else’s version of it. I think it's a really lazy argument to suggest we don’t have a strong fashion culture. We absolutely do – it just manifests differently.

Robyn Cantinella: I think Gab’s perspective is interesting because she's someone who left Australia and is now looking back from overseas, while also working directly with consumers. When you look at the Australian brands that resonate internationally – labels like St Agni or Posse – they share a certain ease. They’re feminine, lifestyle-driven brands and, in many ways, they align with how people perceive Australia. The fact that they’ve been so commercially successful internationally reinforces that image of Australian fashion.

But that’s only one part of the story. We also have another group of designers who are far more experimental and craft-led. They’re creating highly considered, architectural collections that can hold their own on an international stage. You see it constantly with graduate designers and the new guard coming through. The challenge is that Australia is a very small market. At some point, many of those designers have to make a choice between maintaining that level of experimentation and building a sustainable business. As they grow, take on investment and expand internationally, commercial realities inevitably begin to shape the vision.

From a marketing perspective, people overseas are really only seeing the brands that break through. You get a moment where someone like Kendall Jenner wears a St Agni dress and suddenly that becomes a reference point for Australian fashion. The takeaway is often, “Australian style is relaxed and effortless”. What people aren’t necessarily seeing are those more architectural, experimental designers working alongside them.

Sean: The other thing is history. Australia simply doesn’t have the same fashion history that countries like France or Italy do. You’ll look at someone and say, “You look so French today” but no one really says, “You look so Australian”.

Charlotte Hicks: I agree with a lot of what’s been said. Going back to the original question, I do think Australians are more casual consumers, but that’s largely because of our lifestyle. We don’t have to get on the subway every morning, so we don’t need layers and jackets in the same way. We can have fun with proportion and silhouettes, but ultimately we don't need as much. There’s an ease to the way we live, particularly by the coast, and that naturally influences the way we dress.

At the same time, I think we’re talking about different groups of people. There’s the general population, and there’s a cohort of people who are genuinely engaged with fashion and everything that’s happening within the industry. That’s an incredibly vibrant community.

Megha: We’ve talked about ease, casualness and lifestyle, but I'm curious about the body in all of this. Does Australia have a particular relationship to the body that influences the way we dress?

Mana: This is what I was alluding to earlier. Broadly speaking, Australian fashion still feels very heteronormative, very white and quite patriarchal when it comes to stereotypes around how women should dress. Outside of the industry itself, the dominant aesthetic is often athleisure-driven and, in my opinion, quite conservative. I’m talking about the broader fashion landscape, not necessarily the fashion industry.

Robyn: I think it varies also depending on the state. I lived in Melbourne for 10 years and, at the time, it was very Rick Owens. There was a real appreciation for individuality and personal expression. Something about Melbourne still seems to embrace that more readily than Sydney, Brisbane or Perth. Ironically, those cities often have the strongest retail offering, but if we're talking about the broader population rather than the fashion crowd, Sydney can feel much more uniform. People tend to dress in a similar way, whereas Melbourne has always felt a little more eclectic and open to individual style.

Megha: Do you think that there’s still this need for validation from overseas before someone's considered a success here in Australia?

Mana: It’s frustrating because we have international-level talent, vision and political dialogue in the creative industries here, but I feel like people are often under-celebrated until they go overseas.

Robyn: Our industry still gravitates towards people with overseas experience. If someone has worked in London, New York or Paris, there’s often an assumption that they know more or bring greater value. There’s a real sense that the grass is greener elsewhere, and I think that’s true across most creative industries. What’s really interesting is that Australians remain the top three consumers on every major e-tailer internationally, so Australians are important international consumers.

Cult Status: Visibility vs Longevity

Megha: It feels like the gatekeepers of fashion have fundamentally changed. Has influence become genuinely democratised, both globally and here in Australia? Is the industry still largely driven by editors, brands and traditional power structures, or has that hierarchy been disrupted?

Charlotte: It’s totally democratised. If you’ve come up through the old system and your heart is in the right place, you’ll still care about the traditional markers of success. You’ll want the right PR placements, the right editors talking about your brand and the right people wearing it. I still think those things matter. But do they move the needle in the same way they once did? No. Are they the primary drivers of consumer behaviour? Definitely not. If you look at the brands that have had real momentum over the past 12 months, very few of those moments were created through the traditional fashion playbook.

Mana: I think fashion is fundamentally split in two. There’s the commercial side of the industry, and then there’s fashion as an art form. While the commercial side has become much more democratised and consumer driven, I think the artistic side remains relatively protected. It's still being driven by creative vision rather than consumer influence.

Charlotte: I’ll never stop caring about the right placements, the right publications or the right people engaging with the brand. But if you’re looking at what’s actually keeping a business alive, what’s moving the dial and how success is measured today – whether that’s eyeballs, awareness or revenue – those outcomes are increasingly driven by other forces.

Sean: The goal now for brands is to find their way into having cult status.

Megha: What does that mean, cult status?

Robyn: Most great brands achieve cult status at some point, but the real challenge is maintaining it. Many of the Australian brands that have successfully expanded overseas did so because they had a devoted following first. The question is whether they still have that same cultural currency once they become bigger.

To me, cult status has never been about being mainstream. It's something that’s built more organically, through community and word of mouth. But we’re now operating in a world that moves at a completely different pace. I remember before Covid everyone was talking about slowing fashion down. We were questioning the number of seasons, the speed of production and the constant cycle of consumption. Then Covid happened and there was this collective pause. Yet somehow, we’ve emerged moving faster than ever.

Social media has fundamentally changed the way we consume fashion and culture. There was a time when you’d wait for a collection to come out. You’d buy the magazines, study every image and spend time with it. Now everything is immediate. The speed of our lives has accelerated the speed of fashion, and that makes it much harder for brands to build and hold onto cult status in the way they once did.

Megha: We’re talking a lot about "having a moment", but what’s the actual value of a moment? For a brand, a designer or even a model, is a viral moment enough? When I think about someone like Julia Nobis, arguably one of Australia's greatest fashion success stories, she’s built an extraordinary international career without being constantly visible on social media. Her success feels less like a moment and more like a legacy. Have we become too focused on visibility at the expense of longevity?

Mana: Julia’s career began 15 or 20 years ago, in a completely different landscape. She went overseas, built her career gradually and rose through the industry the old-school way. It’s difficult to compare that trajectory to a brand or creative who started five or even 10 years ago because they’re operating in an entirely different environment. The pathways to success today are very different.

Doll: But she’s also not really celebrated in Australia. That's part of the irony. If we’re talking about models, though, there are examples of people who have managed to build longevity. Take Aleyna Fitzgerald. It’s been more than a decade since she won Australia's Next Top Model and she's still relevant. She’ll have a Saint Laurent moment, then a Celine moment, and those kinds of high-fashion bookings reinforce her credibility and cultural relevance. But commercially, she’s earning money throughout the year doing a range of other work. Those fashion moments aren't necessarily what pays the bills. What they do provide is visibility and prestige, which in turn helps sustain a much broader career.

Robyn: I think there’s an accessibility element to all of this. If you're constantly visible and constantly chasing eyeballs, you're riding whatever the current wave happens to be. But when you look at the brands people truly go on a journey with, it's often much quieter than that. They build loyalty through community rather than constant exposure.

There’s no single blueprint for success. Every designer has to decide what they want their brand to be and respond to the realities of the market, the economy and the broader cultural landscape. But at the heart of it, I think it's about building brand equity. The brands that endure are the ones that invest in their community over time.

Brands that rise very quickly often disappear just as quickly. You have to be in it for the long haul. The first five years are usually nail-biting, but that's also what makes it rewarding. You're building something piece by piece, and every decision matters. Your cult customer is everything. They’re the people carrying the brand forward, often beneath the surface. You don't always need all the bells and whistles, the features or the noise. If you've built a genuine community, they're the ones creating momentum.

At some point, you do need the industry to come on board and support that growth. The fashion industry is very good at launching new brands. The challenge is what comes next. As a publicist, I see my role as helping designers build a roadmap around their vision. What a founder wants from their business changes over time, and strategy has to evolve alongside that. Ultimately, the goal is to protect the brand while helping it grow in a way that feels authentic to its community.

Charlotte: What often gets overlooked is that when people talk about a brand being successful or "having a moment", they’re usually only seeing the outcome, not the conditions that helped create it. Sometimes it's an exceptional product. Sometimes it's timing. Sometimes it's access, luck or a willingness to play the game. Sometimes it’s simply having more resources or more people working towards the same goal.

I think there needs to be a greater understanding that success in fashion isn't driven by a single formula. There are countless variables behind why a brand breaks through, and we don't talk about them nearly enough. We tend to look at a brand and say, "They're killing it," without really understanding what got them there.

Robyn: I also think you can have a situation where a brand has the most incredible press, and behind the scenes cannot pay their bills.

Charlotte: Exactly. What is the metric for success? Because chances are, if a brand is suddenly having a moment, they’ve spent a huge amount of money creating that moment. It might look incredibly successful from the outside, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's a healthy business.

The slower, more considered path is often about building a foundation. People will sometimes say to me, 'Oh, you've been quiet', but my response is always: have you looked at the numbers? Visibility and success aren't necessarily the same thing. Sometimes the brands making the most noise are not the strongest businesses, and sometimes the strongest businesses are the ones quietly building over time.

Robyn: As consumers, people engage with brands in different ways. Some love being constantly fed information. They’re happy to be immersed in social media, marketing and the constant stream of newness. That naturally lends itself to more commercial brands that have the resources to maintain that level of visibility.

Then there are consumers who want the opposite. They want to discover things for themselves. They want to understand what they’re buying, learn about the craftsmanship and spend time with a brand before committing to it. They're slower and more considered in the way they consume. I don't think that's necessarily an age thing. It’s more about mindset. But I do think there's a divide between consumers who are drawn to constant visibility and those who are looking for something deeper.

The reality is that most brands need both. They need the commercial side of the business because that's what generates revenue and keeps the lights on. But they also need to build a deeper connection with customers who are willing to go on the journey with them over the long term.

Doll: I think quality plays a huge role in all of this. There are plenty of brands that ride a wave. They're trend-driven, they have a moment and then they disappear. But when it comes to longevity, craftsmanship and consistency matter. If you're genuinely good at what you do and you continue to deliver that over time, you stay in the game.

The challenge is that once a brand becomes known for being consistently good, people can almost take it for granted. It stops feeling new or exciting because it’s become expected. In fashion, we're often chasing what’s hot right now, which means the brands quietly doing great work year after year can sometimes get overlooked.

Charlotte: I never want to be at the very top in that sense. The minute you're at the top, everyone’s watching you and waiting for you to fall. There’s something quite appealing about building a strong, successful business without having to live under that level of scrutiny.

Sean: That’s why the fashion landscape feels so skewed now. The biggest brands have enormous resources, so they can afford to try a hundred different things and see what sticks. Eventually something does, and that becomes the thing everyone buys and talks about.

The challenge is that what rises to the surface isn't always the work with the most craft, talent or originality behind it. There are often incredible brands doing thoughtful, meaningful work but they're competing against businesses with vastly greater reach and marketing power. That’s the reality of the industry today. I would say, for example, if Alix Higgins was doing what he was doing in Paris, he would probably be designing for JW Anderson.

Doll: That’s where quality and conviction matter. If you have a strong point of view, you don’t waver every time the market shifts or a new trend emerges. You don’t constantly bend with the wind. You stand apart from it.

Robyn: Exactly. Ultimately, it’s about innovation rather than simply chasing a following.

The Body Question: The Return of Thin

Megha: Five years ago, body diversity was one of the defining conversations in fashion. Now, with the rise of Ozempic and the return of ultra-thin silhouettes, it feels as though we've seen a shift in the opposite direction. How do you read this moment? Was body diversity ever a meaningful structural change, or was it more of a cultural trend? And where do you think the industry goes from here?

Sean: I have a lot of opinions on this. At its core, I think we’re still deeply conditioned to associate a certain type of body with the ideal presentation of clothing. When a model is very thin, the focus tends to be on the silhouette of the garment rather than the body wearing it. Whether that’s right or wrong, it’s been the dominant visual language of fashion for decades. Fashion has long been built around a narrow set of proportions, and those standards continue to influence how designers, editors and consumers perceive clothing.

At the height of the body diversity conversation, I’d be curious to know whether those shifts translated into meaningful commercial outcomes. Was it a genuine structural change, or was it partly driven by a broader cultural moment? The other thing that often gets overlooked is accessibility. We spend a lot of time criticising fast fashion, but many of those brands offer a far broader size range than a lot of contemporary Australian fashion labels. If we’re serious about inclusivity, that’s part of the conversation too.

Doll: I think the fashion industry loves to react. During the body diversity conversation, the models being championed weren't size 10, 12, 14 or 16. They were size 18 and above. That became the moment. People could then say, “Okay, great, we've done that.” The industry got flack, it responded, and there was almost an out. “We did it. You can't say we didn't. We tried it.” Now we're having the opposite moment. We're back to heroin chic. It’s very early ’90s. Models are thinner than ever, and Ozempic is obviously part of that conversation.

What I find frustrating is that we always seem to move between extremes. What about the fact that, as a society, we should be aspiring to health? A body that’s fit and healthy. What about something that feels good and looks good at the same time?

Robyn: Authenticity is important as well. If you look at someone like Miguel Urbina Tan, the stylist behind Nicol and Ford shows, hats off to him. The way he casts and styles his shows feels incredibly natural. There’s a huge amount of diversity, but I never find myself looking at a model and thinking, “Oh, that’s the plus-size model.” They’re simply the right person for the look, the clothes and the story being told.

The diversity feels seamless because it’s integrated into the creative vision rather than existing as a statement in itself. That’s very different to when brands are simply checking boxes. But the other side of this conversation is that fashion has always traded in aspiration. The entire industry is built on creating a fantasy and inviting people into it. Whether it’s a body, a lifestyle or an idea of beauty, fashion has always been saying, “Buy this and you’ll look like this.”

Megha: From a commercial perspective, would greater representation benefit the brands you work with? Does it translate into sales?

Robyn: It depends. From a wholesale perspective, the sizes that tend to sell aren't necessarily the sixes and eights. That’s just the reality of the market, globally. If you’ve got a cautious buyer, they might only buy a handful of pieces in those sizes. But if you’re dealing with an experienced buyer who really understands their customer and is placing a significant order, they’re buying across a much broader size range because they know that’s where the demand is.

The exception is certain markets, particularly parts of Asia, where sizing tends to skew smaller. But broadly speaking, the customer buying the clothes is often very different from the model being used to sell them. The reality of who is consuming fashion and the image of who fashion is marketed to are often quite different.

Charlotte: If you’re designing well, it ultimately comes back to the product. You have to strip away the smoke and mirrors, the branding and the world you're building and ask: who is this woman? What does she look like? How does she live? What does her body look like? The responsibility is on the designer to ensure there are enough options within the range and that the clothes genuinely work for the customer. That’s just good business.

That said, and this is the less glamorous reality of running a small fashion business, there are practical constraints. We still sample in a size eight. The garments that go down the runway and are photographed are generally a size eight because that's what the business can afford. I can’t necessarily afford to grade a collection into multiple sample sizes and produce additional samples for different models. Sometimes those decisions are driven as much by resources as they are by intention.

Doll: But you need the big luxury houses to set the example because that gives everyone else permission to follow. If Saint Laurent, Dior and Prada were consistently doing it, it would create more flexibility across the industry. I always think about Azzedine Alaïa and the original supermodel era. When you look back at Naomi, Linda and those women in the late ’80s and early ’90s, their bodies looked very different to the runway standard we see today.

I think society has been conditioned over time. When you look at designers like Valentino, Alaïa, Ralph Lauren or Balmain in those earlier eras, they were designing for women. The models weren’t ultra-thin. They had hips, they had busts. Then somewhere along the line the ideal shifted, and what became aspirational became much narrower. That’s what we're still grappling with today.

Mana: I think part of this conversation is also about youth. When you look at the body ideals that fashion repeatedly returns to, they’re often not just thin, they’re adolescent. There’s a long history of the industry celebrating youthfulness above almost everything else, and I think that’s worth interrogating alongside the conversation about body size.

The Long Game: Building a Creative Practice

Megha: We’ve talked a lot about what success looks like for brands. What does it look like for creatives – the photographers, stylists, art directors? I've been thinking about whether Australia’s creative infrastructure still serves the people it’s meant to support. Does the traditional agency model still work for creatives, or does it need to evolve?

Doll: I’m going to say yes it does, because they haven’t evolved. Nothing has shifted or changed in terms of what agencies are providing their creatives with.

Sean: From day one, I approached my career as though I was building a brand. I don’t think a lot of make-up artists think that way because make-up is a trade, but I saw it differently. Every decision I made was about building a distinct identity. The challenge in Australia is that everyone expects creatives to offer the same thing. The question becomes: how do you build a brand when the industry rewards conformity?

Robyn: I think it comes down to taste. Your taste becomes your strategy. It’s everything.

Doll: I think you’re smart, Sean, to choose make-up because, of all the creative disciplines, it's one of the most tactile and versatile. It gives you more ways to evolve and diversify your practice.

Sean: I chose it because it was the most economical. But more broadly, I think anyone working in a creative field has to believe they're capable of being the best at what they do. That’s the mindset you need. I've always trusted my taste. I do think of myself as a tastemaker. I trust my instincts and I back my decisions.

Megha: One thing I’ve heard repeatedly from colleagues now working overseas is that the talent isn’t any stronger there. Australia has incredible creatives. But it can sometimes feel as though the industry expects everyone to offer the same thing, rather than encouraging individuality. Does that limit how far creative talent can go here?

Doll: Australia is a much smaller market, so competition at the very top can feel more intense. Maybe that’s part of it. People become protective of their place because there simply aren't as many opportunities. It can create an environment where it’s harder to celebrate other people’s success.

Sean: I’ve never really thought of myself in competition with other Australian makeup artists. If I’m measuring myself against anyone, it’s someone like Pat McGrath. My benchmark has always been global. At the same time, I still want people here to see me as an Australian makeup artist.

Doll: If you look at the difference between a model and, say, a creative or a designer, one thing a model has – if they’re with the right agency – is backing. If we truly believe in someone, it can take two years before they book a meaningful paid job. During that time, we're paying their rent, encouraging them, saying, “Don't give up. Your moment will come.” Suddenly, everything clicks and off they go.

What gives them that chance is the agency. Not their parents or their family, but an organisation willing to invest in them before there's a commercial return. That's where we’re fortunate. It gives people the opportunity to survive long enough for their careers to happen. Other creatives often don’t have that kind of support.

Robyn: We’ve seen magazines and media shift too. With a few exceptions, they’re increasingly putting people with large social followings on covers because those audiences have become a form of currency. But despite all of that, I don't think we’ve lost our appetite for originality. Whenever someone does something genuinely different – whether it’s in design, styling or make-up – the industry notices. People still stop and say, “Did you see what they did for XYZ?” Those are the moments that stay with you. The spark still comes from people who break the mould and have the confidence to do something that feels entirely their own.

Mana: The closer you can get to your rawest self and put that into the world, the more meaningful the work becomes. That’s the only reason to do it.

Megha: And what about from a designer or brand perspective?

Charlotte: People decide they want to become a designer or start a brand without necessarily understanding that it takes everything from you. It’s a complete lifestyle choice. There are many different ways to build a fashion business, and it comes back to the founder's vision. Are you building a lifestyle business, a million-dollar business, a hundred-million-dollar business? Are you building to sell, or are you building something that will last for generations?

The other challenge is that fashion isn’t an even playing field. Brands enter the industry assuming everyone is operating under the same conditions, and then people start talking about who’s winning, who’s a hype brand, who's having a moment or who's successful. But what does success actually mean? Are we measuring commercial success, cultural relevance, editorial validation or creative achievement? That’s the tension at the heart of fashion. It’s art versus commerce.

Sean: A good example is Renée and Gibson, who built Daisy into a genuine cult brand. It found success very quickly, developed a devoted following which opened doors for them internationally, including now working with Heaven by Marc Jacobs as designers.

We often assume the goal is endless growth, but sometimes success simply gives people the freedom to choose a different life. Not every founder wants to build a global conglomerate. Sometimes they achieve what they set out to do, create something meaningful, and then decide to live differently.

It also makes me think about how much fashion now operates within a buyout culture. A brand becomes successful, a larger company acquires it, and inevitably the brand changes. Sometimes that’s for the better, sometimes it’s not. But I think we're conditioned to see scale as the ultimate measure of success, when for some designers success might simply be building something they love and having the freedom to decide what comes next.

Robyn: That’s actually how much of the industry works. I could be wrong, but I don’t think there are many Australian fashion brands that have remained independently owned for more than 20 or 25 years. Heritage brands are a different story, but when it comes to contemporary fashion businesses, very few make it that far without being acquired or fundamentally changing along the way.

Megha: What about the next generation coming into the industry? I'm constantly having coffee with young creatives who are trying to navigate the early stages of their careers, and what strikes me is how much uncertainty there is. They seem to be looking for a clear road map, but I'm not convinced one exists anymore. Has the path into fashion fundamentally changed?

Robyn: When I was coming up, working until three or four in the morning wasn't unusual – it was simply what was expected. If you left the office at five o'clock on the dot, people noticed. The generation coming through approaches work differently. They’ll give you everything during the day, but at five o’clock they’re ready to switch off and get on with the rest of their lives. That shift in attitude feels quite significant.

Mana: I think that’s partly because Gen Z is more disillusioned with capitalism. They’re much more conscious of what it means to spend your life serving someone else’s dream without having your own effort, energy and life force reflected back in the form of stability or security.

Sean: I don’t think it’s just Gen Z. I think it’s globalisation. I think it’s the internet. Everyone’s like that now – we just call it Gen Z because it happened to coincide with that generation. I think it’s just the way the world has changed.

Doll: The wages we earned when we were starting out were tiny. Yes, rent was cheaper, but we were earning a fraction of what young people earn today. At the same time, this is probably one of the toughest economic climates we’ve seen in our lifetime. The reality is that creative industries have never been particularly well paid. At the beginning, I had two jobs. I’d work on reception at Cameron's modelling agency, then head straight to the Lord Dudley for another shift. That was just the reality. You stayed until the work was done, you figured it out and you made it work.

Megha: I think back to when I was an assistant and I’d find ways to fit in test shoots or unpaid opportunities around whatever work was paying the bills. I'm not saying that’s how it should be, but there was an understanding that if you wanted to build a creative career, you often had to create those opportunities for yourself and I still do.

Sean: For me to get a foothold in makeup, I was working three days a week at an agency, another two or three days a week at Acne and then on my day off I’d play with makeup. It wasn’t really sustainable or reasonable, but that was just the path I had to take to make it happen. Slowly I left the agency, the makeup started taking off, and that job afforded me the grace to pursue that passion and that talent. People talk about young people having this expectation of "I want this now" or "I need more money". But if I was starting out today, I couldn’t afford to just be a makeup assistant in this economy. I couldn’t afford to take a training position and learn from someone else.

Megha: So much of the conversation today was about engineering for a moment. The irony is that everyone at this table seems to be suggesting that the most enduring careers are built by focusing on something else entirely. The common thread seems to be authenticity, conviction, good work and longevity.

Sean: Think about who you’ve chosen to have at this table. They’re all people who’ve carved out an individual space for themselves within the industry. Of course, there are so many things that contribute to success – the economy, the city you’re in, timing, opportunity. But when you look around this table, what everyone has in common is that they’ve pursued their own point of view rather than trying to be the same as everyone else.

Mana: A constant balance between image and substance, art and commerce. You have to survive, but you also have to hold onto the part of yourself that makes the work yours.