A secret no more: Amanda Steele is launching a fashion line.
The influencer has been hard at work on her debut fashion collection for the past one and a half years, unbeknownst to her millions of followers, and now, she’s ready to launch. On Jan. 30, she will bring a 14-piece line to market via Steeleofficial.com, her new web site.
“For as long as I could remember, I always wanted to be a fashion designer,” Steele said. “I’d play fashion designer games, I’d sketch, ‘Project Runway’ was my favorite show. It’s always been in me and this has always been my goal.”
Steele, 19, has previously worked with both fashion and beauty brands, including Bulgari, Maybelline, L’Oréal Paris, Neutrogena, American Eagle, Marc Jacobs, Luv AJ and Quay. Her jewelry collaboration with Luv AJ, which launched in December, saw a number of sold out units, and her 2015 Quay collaboration sold 15,000 units in a week, according to her team.
Amanda Steele Elena De Santiago/WWD
Steele’s eponymous, rocker-inspired line includes T-shirts, a tube top, latex pants, biker shorts, a slipdress, a shirtdress and a vegan leather blazer-trouser combo, all of which range in price from $50 to $200. The collection was manufactured in partnership with Instaco, a vertically integrated fashion producer that has previously partnered with Jordyn Woods, the Merrell Twins and Jenn Im.
“I wanted to make all of the basics that I have in my wardrobe, but the most perfect version of them,” Steele said. “Everything in this first line is pieces I wear basically every day. [The vegan leather jacket] was inspired by a friend’s jacket that I borrow and wear all the time that was vintage. We decided to make it vegan leather, which is awesome and I’m so proud of that, too. Not everyone can just go to their local thrift store and find the most perfect vintage leather jacket, so I wanted to make that accessible to people.”
Steele has a total of five collections in the pipeline, and is planning to drop one every other month.
“The first round is your staples, this is what you start with, and as we release more collections, it’s gonna get more fun and trendy,” she said.
Steele started her YouTube channel in 2010, when she was 10 years old, and now counts 2.7 million subscribers, as well as 2.5 million Instagram followers and 961,000 Twitter followers.
“YouTube was on the come up,” she said of her online beginnings. “In the beauty community, it was mostly girls so much older than me [making videos], but the viewers were my age. When I came about, it was more like a friend, someone more relatable. I think that’s what really got me a lot of attention online.”
In 2012, when she hit 25,000 subscribers, she invited her followers to meet her at the local mall in her hometown of Huntington Beach, Calif.
“It was crazy the amount of girls that showed up,” she recalled. “That was when it was like, oh people are listening to me, they listen to what I say and they want to come meet me.”
Her followers have come to know her as a go-to for fashion advice, as well as “how to be a boss lady.”
“[My followers are] very motivated, independent, different girls, which I love,” she said. “They look to me on feeling confident and sexy and smart and successful,” she said. “I think the collection represents that, too. If you wear these clothes, you’re gonna look so stylish but sophisticated at the same time.”
https://wwd.com/fashion-news/fashion-features/amanda-steele-influencer-launches-fashion-label-1202983284/
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