After giving birth, I dressed in black to blend in with others. Now, my rainbow-inspired fashion brand makes millions.

• Olivia Rubin is a 43-year-old fashion designer who created her own rainbow-inspired brand in 2017.
• In 2014, she purposefully dressed in black to blend when she was struggling with postpartum anxiety.
• A rainbow skirt she designed in 2017 was the start of her personal and business reawakening.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Olivia Rubin. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I’ve been in fashion for more than 20 years. After studying for a Bachelor’s in fashion print at Central St Martin’s, I worked in the industry without a break until 2012, when I found out I was pregnant with my first child.

I felt run down and burnt out, so it was a good time to wind down.

After the birth of my daughter in 2014, I felt depressed, anxious, and alienated. At this time, postpartum depression wasn’t something talked about, so I hadn’t known to expect it and didn’t understand that it was happening to me. I didn’t verbalize this to anyone because I didn’t know it was a thing.

It even affected the way I dressed for years.

I wanted to blend in

For as long as I can remember, I always loved wearing lots of color. But those post-baby months and years were full of black. The decision to dress in the dark color wasn’t because I was too tired to decide what to wear. It was a purposeful decision that reflected my inner anxiety at the time.

All I wanted to do was blend in. Black was a way to blend in.

In 2015, a year after my daughter was born, I was still wearing black, but there was this one outfit I wore — I dressed up the black with brilliant red lipstick and red boots. It was the start of me starting to feel like me again.

A year later, I gave birth to my second daughter, but I also picked up a freelance contract for a high street company. Working again felt right. I’ve always been the kind of person who needs something besides just family life, and I feel like this was it. My oldest was in p,reschool and I just worked around the baby. For the first time in years, I also wanted to make clothes for myself. I made a skirt, a gray printed skirt, and was so proud of myself.

I couldn’t find anything I liked, so I made my own

I continued making my own clothes, for my own personal use, in 2017. I wanted to add some color back in, after years of black. I went shopping to find something that caught my eye, and I couldn’t find what I was looking for. I wanted a piece no one else had, something unusual.

I found a printing company in the UK to print my surface design onto wool and found a seamstress close by to make the skirt I had designed. It was unique, and I loved it. It was a rainbow skirt.

When I posted it on Instagram, my feed absolutely blew up. The skirt went viral, and so many people wanted it. It was a huge turning point and the start of my own brand.

I had never intended to have my own brand — I just wanted to make clothes that made me feel good. But a brand is what it all became.

I started wearing color again

After that rainbow skirt, I found myself again. I started wearing color again and helping others do the same.

I was contacted by shops that wanted to sell my clothes to their customers, and I was traveling all around the world showing my collections. It happened in the blink of an eye.

It just kept snowballing. I was making a million pounds at one point.

Everything I created, I wore. It was all bright or pastels, inspired by the rainbow.

During the pandemic, I created a loungewear collection. By day, I was homeschooling my two girls, and in every spare moment, I was packaging for customers.

I enjoyed growing my business during this time and connecting with my community on social media, but I remember it being a lot to handle.

I’m focused on sustainability

At the end of 2023, I decided to start slowing everything down. I had recently turned 40 and didn’t want to be traveling all the time, leaving my kids behind. I didn’t want to be rushing around constantly, without any time to just enjoy designing without a deadline.

Since then, I’ve been thinking more about sustainability — no one needs this much retail. I’ve stopped my big collections, and I’m not producing hundreds of wasted samples and production that contribute to landfills.

In hindsight, I know I wasn’t happy during my black clothing phase, but I wouldn’t change it. It was a part of my journey. If I hadn’t been through it, I might not have had the idea to create a rainbow skirt, and none of this would have ever happened.