A Manchester woman who started her own fashion label at the age of 16 has revealed how some of the world’s biggest stars – including Ed Sheeran, Miley Cyrus and Ariana Grande – became fans of her work.

Fashion designer Zara Street, 32, explains that, when growing up on a council estate in Manchester, she dreamed of finding success from an early age.

“Life could be quite rough growing up. My parents divorced when I was young so I was raised by a single mum and grew up on a lot of council estates. We struggled financially for a long time and I was dealing with depression and suicidal thoughts throughout my teenage years.

When I was 13 I learned about self-love and the importance of mindset management and it changed my life. At the time it became a big mission for me to spread this message as much as I could, and I’d always loved fashion, so the two naturally merged”.

Zara explains that, although she wanted to create clothing with messages of positivity, she lacked the financial backing to do so properly.

“I don’t come from money – there was nobody I could ask for a loan as a teenage girl. When I was in college I’d work a weekend job and use the money I made to buy fabric paint and customise my own clothing. Then I started designing pieces for my friends, then their friends, until I was making custom clothes for people across Manchester”.

As Zara’s fledgling fashion brand – Keep It Bright – began to take off in her hometown, she decided to drop out of college at 16 and work full-time as the head of her own label.

“I had a lot of teenage self-belief at the time and against my tutors’ and mum’s wishes decided to focus on Keep It Bright full time. I taught myself everything and did it all on an extremely tight budget – I don’t even know how 16 year old me did it all looking back on it now. But I worked hard to prove everyone wrong and I’ve never had another job since”.

16 years later, Zara is still running Keep It Bright and has built a booming business that’s garnered the attention of some of the world’s biggest stars – including Ed Sheeran, Miley Cyrus and Ariana Grande.

“I woke up one morning to see that Miley and Ariana had followed me on Instagram. It made sense – we were all young women in our 20s who had gone through a lot and needed some positivity. I’d also taken some of my clothes to an Ed Sheeran concert and took them backstage to give to him – I wasn’t expecting him to actually wear them straight away! With all her wild self-belief, young me whole-heartedly believed that big celebrities would take notice of what I was doing – but it’s surreal that they’re connecting with it enough to wear my clothes out in public”.

As Keep It Bright goes from strength to strength, Zara has been able to provide for her family for the past 11 years, and has since released a series of successful self-help books.

I’m so proud to say that I’ve now been providing financially for my family since I was 21 – I’ve grown from a depressed girl on a council estate with no money to having the biggest artists of our generation wearing the things I’ve made”.

ABOUT KEEP IT BRIGHT

Keep It Bright is a positive lifestyle brand established in 2007 on a mission to uplift, encourage and empower through colourful statement pieces designed to serve as uplifting reminders to prioritise positivity, self-love and self-care.

www.KEEPITBRIGHT.co.uk