Protecting Your Craft: Why Boundaries Are Essential for Sustainable Creativity

As creatives, we are often taught to push ourselves to the limit in the pursuit of excellence—whether it’s meeting tight deadlines, constantly ideating, or delivering at an ever-accelerating pace. However, there’s a crucial element that’s often overlooked in this high-demand environment: setting boundaries. In a world where the lines between personal and professional lives are increasingly blurred, learning how to create boundaries can help safeguard both your mental well-being and your creative process.

Creatives often push past personal and professional boundaries in the pursuit of success. Between survival jobs, unpaid labours of love, hustling to get your foot in the door, and seeking out new work – your creativity can become stymied by stress before your career even takes off. Especially if you don’t have a safety net to fall back on, it can feel daunting, even self-destructive, to set a limit on your own professional output when so many barriers to success already exist. As The Guardian recently reported, research proves that young working-class people are being blocked from creative industries. But finding a balance between paid and unpaid work, professional and personal life, is essential to succeed long term. The momentum gained from overworking at the beginning will be worthless if you’re too run down and burnt out to take the next steps.

Burnout is, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), the result of “chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed”

In early 2023, Vogue Business journalists Bella Webb and Maliha Shoaib worked on a series of articles called Debunking the Dream which illuminated the reality of working in fashion. Their ‘Success in Fashion’ survey of over 600 fashion professionals found that fashion’s workforce is “experiencing systemic burnout”. Burnout is, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), the result of “chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed”. An occupational phenomenon more than a medical condition, it is characterised by feelings of exhaustion, reduced productivity, and generally poorer mental health.

"True balance is about leaning in to the things that energise you and listening to your body when you need rest and calm.” - Bella Webb

Ironically, Bella was herself diagnosed with burnout last year after completing work on the series and had to take time off to recover. “During that process, someone I interviewed said something that really stuck with me: that work-life balance is a myth,” she tells me. “Often, we think we have balance because we're doing well at work and maintaining a social life outside of work, but really we're just burning the candle at both ends. True balance is about leaning in to the things that energise you and listening to your body when you need rest and calm.”

While there has been increasing discussion in the fashion industry about burnout, we’re yet to see systemic solutions come into effect. The U.K. government is currently exploring the ‘right to switch off’, following in the footsteps of countries like Ireland, Belgium and Australia who have introduced laws to ensure that workers can truly disconnect from work outside of their contracted hours. To ratify the right to reasonable working hours and practices would be a win for workers, allowing individuals to set and manage healthier boundaries between work and personal hours without fear of being reprimanded by their colleagues or boss. The U.K.’s fashion union BECTU also advocates for such protections.

In the meantime however, the responsibility largely falls to individuals to find the line between the two spheres of life. This can be harder than it seems for creatives who often juggle multiple projects, work under intense time pressure, and who tend to have a heightened personal investment in their work. As Bella – whose focus is on sustainability – puts it, “When you care so much about your work, you're willing to go above and beyond, so it's much harder to set (and keep) boundaries. I try to remember that this is just a job, and I can't do it well if I'm burnt out. Sustainability is a marathon, not a sprint!”

Setting healthy boundaries is an ongoing practice, but Bella uses a “progress over perfection” approach. “I wrote myself a ‘menu’ of things that can facilitate the seven types of rest, depending on how much time and energy I have available.” This menu encompasses physical, mental, emotional, social, sensory, creative and spiritual rest, and the activities can be, as Bella says, “basically anything that requires singular focus and time away from screens.”

“It's an unfortunate truth that every job has its own social costs and peculiarities - if you're working in events you may have to work a lot of evening hours, or if you're fitting boilers you may spend a lot of time on your own.” - Bior Elliott

The limits we set to protect our time and energy will look different to different people, and different job roles. As art director and founder of creative studio S_.ein, Bior Elliott puts it, “It's an unfortunate truth that every job has its own social costs and peculiarities - if you're working in events you may have to work a lot of evening hours, or if you're fitting boilers you may spend a lot of time on your own.” Finding what works for you can help you better navigate the peculiarities of fashion. “My boundaries are really about who I work with and why – I've pulled out of a fair few projects because I found out it didn't align with me morally or ethically,” Bior shares.

Working with friends is a tried and true pursuit in fashion, and can empower you to set healthy boundaries with a clear understanding of each other in both a professional and personal context. Co-founders and co-designers of contemporary bridal brand WED Studio, Evan Phillips and Amy Tringh met while studying at Central Saint Martins. “When you start a brand, I think there is a feeling of needing to be and do everything, even when there is more than one founder,” reflects Evan. “We had to be clear about our strengths, weaknesses and make sure we have each other covered rather than expecting each of us to be good at everything,” adds Amy.

“Budget constraints often impose limitations and you have to just be super clear about it.” - Amy Tringh

“After many years of 7-day weeks for the both of us, these days we are more strict about maintaining standard working hours so we have down time, which is so important for the health of the brand and everyone involved,” explains Evan. The key is organising your time, even if you start small: “I heard someone say once if you can do a task in under 5 minutes you should do it there and then,” shares Evan, “so I try to do this to stop little jobs mounting and becoming overwhelming.” Amy agrees: “Efficiency is so important to create healthy boundaries. It isn't simply saying ‘we do not work past 6pm’ – we implement things to make sure we do not work past 6pm.”

Setting healthy boundaries can also benefit your bottom line. For independent designers, “Budget constraints often impose limitations and you have to just be super clear about it,” Amy explains. “In the past, these boundaries might have been less clearly defined, leading to people-pleasing at our own expense, which isn't cost-effective.” This applies to any freelance creative: learn to value your time and gauge which projects you can afford to take on each month or year without jeopardising your ability to stay afloat financially and creatively.

For fashion designers the conversation always seems to be about pushing boundaries, not setting them. But, as Amy stresses, “All creatives with small businesses need to find a balance between play, exploration and being super creative whilst also understanding there are budgets.” While boundaries often need to be firm, that doesn’t mean they should be rigid – structuring your time and carefully monitoring your finances enables you to be flexible with your own moods. “You can’t be constantly creative, especially if you don’t have a huge team to do the things that take you away from it,” Evan points out. “Learning to recognise when you’re in a creative flow and pivoting around that helps.”

Words: Aoife Murray