Making Space in Luxury: What Celebrity Corset Designer Deborah Brand Says It Takes To Build In Elite Fashion

From celebrity clients to technical corsetry, Deborah Brand shares the realities of building longevity in luxury fashion as a woman of colour.

Image Courstey of Deborah Brand

Despite fashion’s increasingly diverse public image, luxury fashion remains an industry shaped by exclusivity, class and access. Runways and campaigns may appear more representative than they once were, but who gets to build sustainable careers within elite fashion spaces remains unevenly distributed, particularly for women of colour. The UK Fashion DEI Report 2024 found that only 9% of executives and boards in the British fashion industry are held by people of colour. This disparity is reflected elsewhere in the industry. During the February 2025 London Fashion Week womenswear schedule, only two of nearly 60 shows were by Black women designers, according to The Guardian.

For celebrity corset designer Deborah Brand, a second-generation British designer of Guyanese heritage, building longevity within luxury fashion has required far more than creativity. Over a career spanning four decades, Brand has adapted and reinvented her practice to sustain a place within elite fashion, with clients including Billie Eilish, Kim Kardashian and Cynthia Erivo.

While luxury fashion is often framed through an idealised image of celebrity fittings, red carpets and carefully curated campaigns, what is less visible is the level of reinvention required to remain commercially and creatively relevant over time. After The Scotch Bonnet Corner spoke with Brand, a few clear lessons emerged around what it actually takes to build and sustain a career within luxury fashion. And because we don’t gatekeep around here, let’s unpack what these were.

Luxury requires persistence

Asked what it takes to carve out space within luxury fashion, Brand’s answer is immediate: “perseverance.” For her, sustaining a career has meant “getting up every day and keeping going.” In an industry where trends shift quickly and aesthetics evolve constantly, maintaining a career can be as difficult as breaking into the industry in the first place. Success in luxury fashion, Brand suggests, is not always built through one breakthrough moment. It comes from consistency.

You have to keep developing your skillset

Brand’s career has not followed a straightforward path. Before moving into technical corsetry, she designed stretch dresses under her label Sub-Couture. As her work evolved, so did the level of technical skill it demanded. “Once I started designing under my own name, I put in the time and learned more. I learned how to pattern cut, I learned how to draw, I learned construction,” she says. For aspiring creatives, the lesson is clear: talent alone is rarely enough. Building longevity in luxury fashion often means continuously expanding your technical and creative skillset, rather than relying on a single specialism.

Your work needs a recognisable identity

“You’ve got to find your signature,” Brand says. Rather than chasing every commercial opportunity, she believes designers need a clear understanding of what defines their work. In a saturated industry, recognisability becomes part of survival.

For Brand, that identity eventually became corsetry, a technically demanding specialism she moved into after a serious back injury led her to experiment with garments that could reshape and support the body. What began as a necessity developed into expertise. Brand’s trajectory highlights the value of having a niche. In crowded creative industries, being known for something specific can be just as important as being talented.

Luxury Has to Justify Its Value

For Brand, if designers want to operate within high-end fashion, their work must justify the cost attached to it. “You can’t charge high prices if there isn’t value,” she says.

In her own work, the finished garment may appear polished and effortless, but the process behind it is highly technical. Brand’s practice reflects the level of skill, refinement and specialist knowledge often required to operate within luxury fashion. Her work suggests that technical expertise and attention to craft can play a major role in building longevity within competitive industries.

Building Luxury On Your Own Terms

Brand’s background also shaped how she approached luxury fashion. Her story suggests that building a creative career does not always require following a conventional route; finding your own pathway can be part of sustaining longevity in elite industries. Raised in a second-generation Guyanese household, she describes growing up in a culture where education and conventional careers carried weight. Fashion was not necessarily the expected route. While studying maths, physics and computer science, she quietly learned fashion with the help of design students at her college before eventually building a business that would span decades. Her journey offers a reminder that creative careers are not always linear; building success may sometimes mean creating space for yourself outside traditional pathways.

What We Can Learn From Brand

Luxury fashion may appear increasingly diverse, but visibility alone does not guarantee sustainability. Brand’s career suggests that building within luxury demands persistence, technical skill, a clear creative identity and work that can justify its value in a crowded market. For women of colour seeking to establish themselves within high-end fashion, making space may depend not only on getting in, but on continuing to evolve once there.