You may have style, you have grace...

You may have style, you have grace... but you usually are sure that you have what it takes to make it being a fashion designer. Take heart! Designers like Rick Owens and Stella McCartney demonstrate that there is more than one pathway in order to success.

Here is an overview of all the unique paths you can choose:

This popular way to success as a fashion designer has been accepted by many big names, including Jordan Kors, Alexander Wang, Ralph Lauren and Donna Karan.

California-raised, Paris-based designer Rick Owens dropped from what is now known as the Otis College of Art and Design right after just two years of study. The reason? He had learned enough in his pattern-making classes to find work in the business.

Stella McCartney went to Central St Martins College of Art and Design. Ann Demeulemeester went to exactly the same Antwerp fashion design school since Dries Van Noten and Walter Van Beirendonck.

Rick Owens wasn't always Rick Owens. He came to be Gene Schenker. Michael Kors was born Karl Anderson Jr., but was invited but his mother to change his own name, at age 5, when their mother remarried. (Perhaps most curiously, he was allowed to design their mother's wedding dress! )

Ann Demeulemeester told W Magazine that the lady and the other Antwerp-trained designers associated with her generation "had incredibly difficult names for the world... It was far less difficult to say 'the Belgians, ' instead of 'Ann Demeulemeester ' or 'Dries Van Noten. '"

Rick Owens worked for others before launching his own label. But Karl Lagerfeld is perhaps the most famous example of this approach. He or she apprenticed for Pierre Balmain and has worked as head designer to get Chanel.

Intrepid SEO Antwerpen Belgian designer Ann Demeulemeester is famous for having refused just about all offers of work from other style labels. Her independence is said to be very important to her.

Rick Owens is well known for his high heel boots for men. Ann Demeulemeester has unisex outfits. And a long list of designers (Jean-Paul Gaultier,

, Walter Van Beirendonck, Philippe Dubuc) have designed skirts for a man. Marc Jacobs is renowned for achieveing embraced the male skirt themselves.

Think Valentino's glamourous frocks or even Dries Van Noten's military-inspired styles for men.

Dries Van Noten was born into a fashion family. Rick Owens's mother is a seamstress.

Ann Demeulemeester credits her parents with being very supportive of her, but they were not in the fashion world themselves. The girl father worked in academia being a specialist on the chicory root.