u/Necessary-Ad2290

Hello everyone,
I am currently 17 years old and entering my final year of high school. Next year, I will therefore have to choose what path to follow, and I would like to avoid committing myself to a path simply because it seems to be the logical continuation of what I have done up until now.

To give a bit of context: I come from the fashion world and I am currently doing a vocational baccalaureate in sewing and garment production.
For a long time, I considered pursuing this direction professionally. But after a lot of reflection and several discussions with people who are more experienced than me, I realized something important: today, I create above all to externalize my emotions, my ideas, and my personal vision.
My artistic work has become something very intimate, a form of catharsis, and it is not based on the expectations of a client or a market.
For this reason, I increasingly think that I do not want to depend financially on my art. I want to continue creating, probably for my entire life, but without being forced to turn this process into a profitable product.

At the same time, there is another field that has attracted me for a long time: entrepreneurship.
When I was around 14, I launched a small clothing brand based around skate culture. I made around €1,000 in revenue before stopping it, mainly because I was very young and I managed the whole logistics side rather poorly.

At that time, my relationship with clothing was also different: it was mainly a passion and a field for experimentation, not yet the personal means of expression that it has become today.

Since then, I have tried several small projects. Some worked a little, others not at all, but I have always enjoyed looking for opportunities, building something from scratch, and trying to understand why an idea works or does not work.

Today, I would therefore like to use this year to seriously think about this path rather than choosing my studies by default.
I mainly have a few questions for those of you who have created businesses or who have more experience than I do:

What advice do you wish you had received when you were 17 or 18 and were starting to take a serious interest in entrepreneurship?

What mistakes should I particularly avoid at my age?
What books have genuinely taught you how to identify good problems to solve or good business opportunities, rather than simply “motivating” you to become an entrepreneur?

Would you advise me to start experimenting with small projects right now rather than trying to immediately find “the big idea”?

Regarding my studies: with a vocational baccalaureate in sewing and garment production, what kinds of programs would you recommend I look into if I want to develop stronger skills in business, entrepreneurship, marketing, finance, or management?

I am not necessarily looking for a recipe for success or to become an entrepreneur overnight. Above all, I am trying to understand how to use the next few years intelligently to learn, experiment, and give myself solid foundations.

Thank you very much to those who take the time to share their experience.

Before I explain what I mean, I just want to make it clear that this is only my personal view of art. Everyone has their own.

I’m 17, and next year I’ll be entering my final year of high school in France. So I’m getting to the point where I seriously have to think about what I want to study and what direction I want my life to take after school.

And honestly, I’m really worried about making the wrong choice.

A big part of me wants to continue studying in an artistic field, but at the same time, I’m starting to question whether I actually want my art to become my main source of income. That’s why this question feels especially important to me right now.

My field is clothing. Like a lot of people, I started with an independent streetwear brand, and at the time, making money from my creations didn’t bother me at all. Quite the opposite.

But over the past few years, I’ve felt a much deeper need to externalize my emotions, my view of society, and everything I feel internally.
At some point, creating stopped being just about making something visually beautiful.
It became a way for me to understand myself, to externalize things, and to represent atmospheres, emotions and ideas that I sometimes can’t even put into words.

And that’s where this question started for me.

The more I thought about whether I could make a living from my art, the more I wondered what would happen the moment my art became responsible for paying my rent.

At that point, it wouldn’t only have to express something anymore. It would also have to sell.
I would have to think about demand, what people like, what gets attention, what can be sold repeatedly, and probably what is currently relevant.
And I wonder whether, little by little, that would inevitably change what I create.

Of course, I know some artists manage to find a balance between artistic freedom and making a living from their work.

But personally, I’m afraid that financial pressure would eventually influence my decisions, even unconsciously.

Maybe I would choose one idea over another because it is more marketable. Maybe I would repeat something because it worked before. Maybe I would avoid making something too difficult, too strange or too personal because I know it probably wouldn’t sell.

And even if those changes were very small, would I still be creating exactly what I would have created if money wasn’t involved?

That’s the part that bothers me.

It’s why I’m starting to think that I might need a separate main source of income, so that my art can remain a space where I don’t have to ask myself whether something will sell, whether people will like it, or whether it follows current trends.

But at 17, with important decisions about my future coming very soon, I genuinely don’t know whether distancing my career from my art would be a smart decision or something I might regret later.

I also sometimes feel like today we consume art the same way we consume any other content.

We scroll, judge something within seconds, and move on. But some art needs time. It needs sensitivity, attention and questioning. Sometimes you need to stay with something before it actually starts affecting you.

And I’m afraid that if I depend financially on my art, I might eventually start adapting to that way of consuming things.

That I might slowly start creating to be consumed rather than creating what I genuinely need to create.

So I’m curious, especially about people who are older than me or who already make a living from their art:

Do you think it’s possible to make a living from your art without money eventually changing what you create?

And if you do make a living from it, have you noticed your work changing because of financial pressure?
I’d also really appreciate hearing from people who had this same dilemma when choosing what to study or what career to pursue. Looking back, are you happy with the choice you made?