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Fashion designer and “Project Runway” alum Mychael Knight took the ultimate mental health day: Calling in sick helped launch him on the path to being an entrepreneur.

In an interview with The Atlanta Post, Knight says:

Relocating to Atlanta convinced Knight that he was not only a designer, but an entrepreneur. With the exception of an internship with Wilbourn Exclusive, a custom-design firm, and a three-month stint at a collection agency, Knight has always worked for himself. The permanent shift to self employment was unplanned. As Knight explained it, he got sick one day and called off of work. The next day, he felt better but still didn’t go to work. By the third day, they called him and asked if he was coming back and he said no.

Opportunities to work in his craft presented themselves immediately. The first came from shooting the breeze with a college friend, Satchel Jester. “Satchel actually used to do some event planning for Jagged Edge for their runway shows,” he said. “He used to do all their fashion shows so I would just and hang out in the studios. They had a men’s line, so for a few of the fashion shows, I would do female pieces to complement their male pieces. That’s how I started catching on with them and all the other celebrities that happened to be there. That’s how I started to gain my clientele.”

Knight didn’t stop there. He did whatever he could to make a living. “I would do small little collections with a boutique here or I would do a collection for a Bronner Bros. [hair] show. My career is so crazy because it runs the gamut,” he explained. “At one point, I was doing prom dresses really, really heavy. That’s actually how I met Ciara. I’ve known Ciara since she was in high school before she was Ciara. So I was doing all the prom dresses, then I actually had a shift in career where I was doing a lot of stripper stuff and it was all just because I needed to make some money. It moved to where I was doing a lot of promotional cocktail dresses for [brands like] Alize and Remy and Courvoisier.”

Thinking outside the box has always been big for Knight. “Even in a moment where some people probably would have went out and tried to go get a job, I knew there was no way in hell I was gone go back to that office,” he said. “I am an entrepreneur. I’m a businessman so I was figuring out how can I make what I have and work for what I got. Just like I found that the music industry is a route to a kind of work through fashion, [I figured] the strip club industry is big here, they always need little costumes and I can sew. When you’re an entrepreneur or businessman, when times are trying, you have to figure out a way to kind of re-shift and make things work for you.”

For the full story, click here.

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