Should Making It in Fashion Be This Hard?

In April, after the Fashion Trust U.S. awards, she estimated her debt to be about $90,000. Her creditors include factories that are starting to get mad, she said, but also people central to her team, like the designer Andrew Curwen, who is owed a few months’ worth of invoices.

Well, money. There was $370 in her account. “And I made a $400 sale two hours ago,” she said, meaning she had been in the red that morning.

Ms. Velez first started filling up notebooks with fashion drawings around age 5, according to Ms. Church, and received her first sewing machine as a gift from a family friend at age 10. She took sewing classes at 12 (the instructor accepted only adults, initially, but Ms. Velez looked mature for her age, Ms. Church said). At 15 a local TV reporter ... See more

The problem, Ms. Velez has learned, is that recognition — the buzz around awards, reviews and celebrity endorsements — doesn’t always yield tangible returns. If anything, she said, it contributes to the idea that things are going well when they are not.