I remember sitting in my styleout room, looking at weeks of work hanging in front of me. Every outfit had been carefully considered, sourced, and arranged. The looks were gridded out, everything was organized, and we were getting ready to pack for a shoot. And then my phone lit up. One text message, and suddenly everything I'd been working on needed to change. I remember looking around the room, realizing I was about to take everything off the wall and start over. Which, if you've ever spent weeks building something creatively, is a pretty terrible feeling.

But I've also been doing this long enough to know that things change. Sometimes at the absolute worst possible moment. And while I was frustrated, I knew I couldn't spend the rest of the afternoon being frustrated. There was still a shoot to prepare for, a team depending on me, and a job that needed to get done. The direction had changed, and whether I agreed with it or not, I needed to figure out how to make it work. So I took everything down and started again.

I went back through the looks, reconsidered what we had available, and tried to find a way to preserve as much of each athlete's individuality as I could within the new direction. That's something I think experience teaches you. Not how to avoid things going wrong, because they always will, but how to recognize when it's time to stop reacting and start solving. And the interesting part is that even after we made the changes, I couldn't quite shake what had bothered me about the situation in the first place.

I'd spent weeks thinking about the people who would actually be wearing those clothes. Their personalities, their individual styles, what felt natural to them. I'd built each look around the idea that the athlete should still feel like themselves, even when they were appearing in someone else's campaign. And suddenly, that wasn't necessarily the priority anymore.

I've spent a good part of my career working with athletes from the brand side. And one of the things I've always found interesting is the balance between what a brand wants to communicate and who the athlete actually is. When you're working on a campaign, there are a lot of things to consider. The product, the creative direction, the audience, the business objectives, and all the people involved in bringing it together. None of those things are unimportant. In fact, I spent years learning how to balance them, and I genuinely loved that part of the work.

But I've always believed the strongest athlete partnerships happen when the brand feels like a natural extension of someone's life. When you see an athlete wearing something and believe it's something they might have chosen for themselves, whether the cameras were there or not. It's a subtle distinction, but I think it matters.

There's a difference between putting someone in a great outfit and creating a look that actually belongs to them. And when you're working with athletes, that difference becomes even more interesting because their identity exists well beyond the campaign you're creating. They have their own interests, their own relationships with fashion, their own personalities, and their own ideas about how they want to be seen. Some have a very clear point of view. Others are still figuring it out. Neither is necessarily better. That's part of what makes the work interesting.

I've always enjoyed that process of getting to know someone. Understanding what they gravitate toward, what they're comfortable with, and where they might be willing to try something new. Sometimes it's about introducing something unexpected. Other times it's knowing when to leave something alone. And I think that's where styling becomes something more than just putting clothes together. It's about understanding the person well enough to make decisions that feel connected to who they are, even when they're stepping into a world that might be unfamiliar to them.

The more I worked with athletes, the more I started thinking about what happened outside the campaigns we were creating. An athlete might be working with several brands at once, each with its own creative team, its own expectations, and its own idea of how that person should show up. And while each campaign might be successful on its own, I started wondering who was thinking about the bigger picture. Not just whether the athlete looked good in one photograph, but whether all those different moments felt connected to the same person.

I don't think every appearance or partnership needs to look the same. That would be pretty boring. People evolve. Their tastes change. They experiment, take risks, and sometimes get things wrong. That's how a personal style develops. But there should be something recognizable underneath it all. Something that feels like them.

And I think that's especially important now, when athletes are being seen in so many different places beyond their sport. Campaigns, appearances, partnerships, social content, tunnel walks. There are more opportunities than ever for athletes to express themselves, but also more people influencing how that expression takes shape.

We made the changes to the shoot. We figured it out. And the campaign ultimately turned out well. I still look back on the work positively. But that moment stayed with me, not because of the frustration, but because it made me think differently about where I wanted to sit in the creative process.

For a long time, I'd been helping brands tell their stories through athletes. I started becoming more interested in helping athletes tell their own stories, and then figuring out how brands could become part of them. It's not that one approach is right and the other is wrong. They're just different starting points. And I think there's a lot of value in having someone who understands both.

Someone who knows what a brand needs from a campaign, but also understands that an athlete has an identity that extends beyond any one partnership. Someone who can work alongside their agent, marketing team, publicist, or existing creative partners and help keep that larger picture in mind.

That thinking became a big part of why I eventually decided to build something of my own. I wanted to take everything I'd learned working inside major brands and apply it from a slightly different perspective. To work more directly with athletes, understand what matters to them, and help shape how they show up across the different parts of their lives and careers.

Not to create an image that feels manufactured or overly considered. And certainly not to make every moment look like it came from the same reference board. Just to help make sure that whatever they're doing, whether it's a major campaign, an appearance, or something as simple as getting dressed, there's a sense of who they are behind it.

I still love working with brands. I love the collaboration, the creative challenges, and the process of making something that feels both interesting and commercially successful. That hasn't changed. What's changed is the perspective I want to bring into those conversations.

Because at the end of the day, a brand might have an athlete for a season, a campaign, or a particular moment. But the athlete has to live with their image long after it's over. And I think that's worth protecting.