Sydni Warner’s childhood obsession was Project Runway. ‘90s and 2000s kids get it.
Each episode of the competition show started in infinite hallways of color and sparkle. Designers took otherwise two-dimensional fabric and created sculptures that made our imaginations run wild. The worst design went home in a dramatic manner: As we know, in fashion, one day you’re in, and one day, you’re out.
And just like that, New York City became synonymous with creativity, glamour, and fashion.
Project Runway didn’t falsely represent the Big Apple. It’s the national leader in creative jobs, according to the Fashion Institute of Technology. About one-fifth of American fashion designers call it home. And while the state of New York generates 7.5% of the United States’ $1.2 trillion GDP in art and cultural production, Midwest states are responsible for only 2 to 3.5% each.
If the money and the people are concentrated on the coast, surely it’s ludicrous to start a fashion brand in the middle.
Or is it?
The Duey Dealer’s hometown advantage
A small but mighty contingency of Midwest designers are making a case for pursuing fashion in the Midwest. Sydni Warner believes if she moved to New York City – she’d lose.
“I feel like the Midwest and Detroit have the hometown advantage,” Warner says. “People will back you because they know you, and people will back you because they see that other people know you. I feel like if I move to New York or move to LA, I would lose that advantage.”
Warner is the founder and CEO of The Duey Dealer. She designs and sews bonnets, durags, and other hair protection products. And she does it all in her house, by herself, with her own two hands.
Warner invests about $15 into each piece, which includes material, labor, and packaging costs. She sells each piece for around $40. In this year alone, she has moved 432 pieces from her home sewing machine to the hands of customers. Along the way, musicians have taken notice.
Warner has an exclusive contract with Full Body Durag, who wore one of her denim durags when he performed at Coachella in 2025. Warner also designs for DJs like Killa Squid and Donovan Glover.
Parties are another source of her revenue. The day after we talked, Warner toted her sewing machine to a private party of 40 women, all of them waiting for her personalized bonnets. “Boom,” she says. “Quick two thousand dollars.”
All this success – she’s found it in her hometown of Detroit, Mich. Every so often, she ventures to New York City to showcase her brand. For example, Warner previewed new custom products in Brooklyn at CultureCon 2026 on Oct. 3 and 4. But she doesn’t want to move there.
“I can easily drive or catch a flight to New York and do all of the New York things without the New York stress and without the New York cost of living,” Warner says. “It’s already expensive as shit here.”
Warner says Detroit is developing the infrastructure she could use to advance her business. For example, Warner is currently building a tech pack with the Industrial Sewing and Innovation Center, an institute for manufacturing technology in Detroit. She hopes to start manufacturing there by December.
“I feel like all of these business incubators that are here are unique, and I would be amiss if I tried to travel everywhere to chase the stardom, when I can easily just build [my business] brick by brick down here,” Warner says.
Get Bentz’s Farm: Knitting and watching the life cycle
When Theresa Bentz looks out the window of her Cannon River Valley farm, outside of Northfield, Minn., she sees 30 acres of prairie and woodland. She also remembers the suburban life she once lived with her husband and young son – which they quickly grew tired of, she says.
“We wanted to have more of a connection with where our food came from,” Bentz says. “Just for health reasons and ethical reasons – it’s important to us that what we eat has had a really good life.”
Farmers around her were already ethically producing berries and vegetables, so Bentz decided to specialize in raising sheep for meat and wool.
“But I started to really enjoy the wool part of it,” Bentz says.
When she first sheared her sheep, none of the local fiber mills wanted to process the wool. That’s because she raises Icelandic sheep, and their wool can be complicated to process, Bentz says.
“That’s when I really saw an opportunity to increase what we do on the farm,” Bentz says.
Meanwhile, Bentz was still working her healthcare job. The COVID-19 pandemic, she says, she “had a feeling it was coming.” She switched to being an “on call” employee, and she ordered some wool mill machinery.
Today, Bentz processes the wool of her sheep herself. The wool of Icelandic sheep consists of a downy undercoat, topped by a longer hair-like coat. Bentz blends the different fibers together. The result is durable yarn – good for winter gear like mittens, hats, sweaters, and outerwear.
“In the wintertime, when we have a lot of snow, the water sits on top of the fiber, or on top of the hat, instead of sinking down next to the skin,” Bentz says. “So it keeps you nice and warm.”
Bentz knits hats and mittens by hand, selling them for about $50 at local markets. But her best-seller is her yarn. Her yarn made $90,000 in revenue last year for the farm.
“The craft community – or the handknit community – they’re such an amazing group of people who are ready to support local,” Bentz says.
The majority of designers who buy her yarn are recreational knitters. They create textiles for themselves, their friends, and their family.
“[When you knit,] you really are a skilled craftsman and you’re making art that you can wear,” Bentz says.
As she knits, she can tune out the “doom and gloom of our world,” and instead enjoy the life cycle she has nurtured on her farm.
“I’m taking the wool that’s wasted here in the mill – stuff that can’t be [worked] on – and I’m applying it to my garden,” Bentz says. “I get to experience the fiber from beginning to end, and then watch it decompose and turn back into soil, and then start all over.”
Brittany Taylor: ‘The Midwest does keep me grounded’
The basement of The Shop DSM Event Center in Des Moines buzzes like a dressing room on opening night. Somewhere a faucet squeaks and flushes, somewhere else a camera snaps and flashes, and hairspray is the oxygen models and designers breathe for the time being.
Vanity mirrors line the left wall, illuminating B. Nicole Brand’s squad. Thirteen models squeeze in to do their final touch-ups: lips, liner, setting spray. Brittany Taylor, the founder of B. Nicole Brand, bounces between models, making final touches; for these models are her walking art, and she wants them to look perfect.
Before the Lumen Arts Production runway begins, Taylor and her models link hands, and they bow their heads in prayer.
“I’m so big on team,” Taylor says. “And without a team, B. Nicole Brand would not be B. Nicole Brand.”
Brittany Taylor started conceptualizing her brand in 2020, then started manufacturing in 2023. She says her most fun collection is “No Dimmer.” It’s inspired by her childhood in the late 1990s and early 2000s. She remembers watching “106 & Park” after school, in which the girls wore jersey dresses.
“I wanted to recreate the feeling,” Taylor says. “[And I wanted to] put it in that B. Nicole perspective.”
She created two jersey dresses: sleeveless, with a slight V-neck, and mini in length. In a varsity font, “B. Nicole” is printed on the front and “UNDIMMED” on the back. The first dress is sunrise yellow with sky blue hemming and print. The second dress makes the sky blue the primary color.
“‘No Dimmer’ is all about not dimming your light for anyone – [your] confidence when you walk in the room,” Taylor says.
Taylor conceptualized and promoted “No Dimmer” in Des Moines. She was born and raised here, and she still calls it “home base.”
“The creative people that we have here – it keeps me here,” Taylor says. “The Midwest does keep me grounded.”
But that doesn’t mean she’ll stay forever. Taylor’s dream for B. Nicole Brand is that it will become a fashion house in Italy. She loves the craftsmanship in the country, and sees an opportunity to expand into shoes and bags.
“Wherever the brand takes me, and my career takes me,” Taylor says, “then of course, I may relocate.”