How Chronic Pain Accidentally Led Me to Start a Clothing Brand

If you had asked me ten years ago what my dream job was, my answer would've been immediate: fashion designer. No hesitation. I've wanted this since high school. I spent years working toward it, earned my degree, landed a exciting job in my field, and thought I had finally "made it."

Then one morning, everything changed.

I woke up like any other day, but the moment I tried to get out of bed, pain shot through my lower back and down both of my legs. Not the kind of pain where you think, "I must've slept funny." The kind where your brain immediately goes, "Something is very, very wrong." I wish I could tell you it disappeared after a few days. Instead, it became my new normal.

What followed was a blur of doctor appointments, MRIs, physical therapy, medications, and specialists. I kept waiting for someone to tell me what was wrong and, more importantly, how to fix it. Instead, I slowly had to come to terms with something I never expected to hear in my twenties: this wasn't temporary. This was my life now.

I grieved. Not just because I was in pain, but because clothing, the thing I'd loved my entire life, had suddenly become another obstacle.

Most people don't think twice about getting dressed. They throw on their favorite jeans, lace up their shoes, and head out the door. For me, every outfit became a calculation. Would these seams rub too much today? Would this waistband put pressure on my back? Could I tolerate wearing this for more than an hour? Every decision revolved around minimizing pain instead of expressing who I was.

I've always loved alternative fashion, video games, combat boots, and interesting silhouettes. Clothing was how I expressed myself before I ever said a word. My wardrobe became whatever hurt the least. It felt like I had lost a piece of my identity. Nobody prepares you for grieving something as simple as getting dressed.

As I was trying to navigate this new reality, I started talking about it on TikTok. One day while scrolling, I heard the term “sensory friendly clothing” for the first time in my life and thought, What if someone made sensory-friendly clothing for adults who love gaming? I shared the idea on my page. I wasn't expecting much, but when I woke up the next morning, my phone was exploding. Thousands of views, hundreds of comments, and messages from complete strangers saying, "I've been looking for something exactly like this."

That was the moment everything clicked. I thought I was trying to solve my own problem, but it turned out there were thousands of people who had been quietly wishing for the same thing.

So I decided to build it.

People assume that because I'm a fashion designer, I already knew how to start a clothing brand. I laugh every time I hear that because corporate fashion and running your own brand are two completely different worlds. At work, I have merchandising, sourcing, production, quality, marketing, and sales teams. When you launch your own brand, congratulations! You are EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. of those departments.

I had to figure everything out myself. I researched manufacturers, compared quotes, learned about minimum order quantities, negotiated pricing, sourced fabrics and trims, built a website, learned marketing, taught myself video editing, and somehow became an expert in logistics. It turns out that designing clothes is only a small part of running a fashion brand. The rest is solving problems you didn't even know existed.

Of course, the best part was finally getting to design.

My first collection was inspired by one of my favorite games of all time: The Legend of Zelda. I spent countless hours sketching ideas, throwing them away, sketching again, and obsessing over tiny details that most people would probably never notice. Once the designs were finalized, I built every tech pack from scratch, sourced reference garments, selected fabrics and trims, and worked closely with my manufacturer through multiple rounds of sampling and revisions. It was like pulling teeth to get this established manufacturer to understand I didn’t want the industry standard way of constructing these garments. I was looking to build something new. Every sample I reviewed needed revisions, and I was liable for the cost of the next sampling round. My tech packs were not clear enough and I had to tweak them over and over until I finally had then right.

Then one day, a finished five-piece collection that had existed only in my sketchbook a few months earlier, arrived at my door.

Holding those finished samples is a feeling I'll never forget.

Shear Panic isn't just another clothing brand to me. It's proof that something meaningful can come from one of the hardest chapters of your life. My chronic pain took away the ability to wear the clothes I loved, but it also gave me a purpose I never saw coming: creating clothing for people who have spent far too long feeling overlooked by the fashion industry.

If you're reading this because you're dreaming of starting your own clothing brand, let me leave you with this: you'll never feel completely ready. You'll question yourself, redesign the same garment more times than you can count, and probably convince yourself your manufacturer secretly hates you after the tenth round of revisions.

But one day, you'll hold something in your hands that didn't exist until you imagined it. There's honestly nothing like it.

If you're ready to take the next step, I'd love to help. I've learned a lot through both corporate fashion and building my own brand, and I'm passionate about helping other creators bring their ideas to life.

You don't have to figure it all out alone.