PHOTO COURTESY OF DONOVAN MANN
Models show off MannMade Athleisure on the runway during the 2025 New York Fashion Week.
“The Lord has blessed me with a lot of energy,” Donovan Mann, a 2019 Creighton University graduate, said with a smile on his face.
That energy, coupled with hard work, is what helped Mann—who works a full-time engineering job at TD2 in addition to owning MannMade—take his clothing line to New York Fashion Week earlier this month.
His business, MannMade, is twofold: MannMade Skills Training is focused on basketball training for young athletes, and MannMade Athleisure is their clothing line.
MannMade was founded in 2021, and its focus for its first couple of years was basketball training. Mann has had a passion for the sport since his childhood and even turned down a Division II collegiate basketball scholarship to attend Creighton.
The Dallas native decided to attend Creighton over playing collegiate basketball because pursuing academics was important to him.
“I chose to use my brain instead of just focusing on using my body,” Mann said.
Still, the sport remained an important part of his life, and he played on Creighton’s practice teams.
“I love basketball. … I just wanted to be around the game,” Mann said.
This desire to be around the game is what eventually led him to start training kids and start MannMade; then, in 2023, MannMade expanded beyond the gym and entered the fashion sphere.
When Mann first reached out to a friend for help designing a MannMade logo, he didn’t know that it would lead to a clothing line or the opportunity to be part of the 2025 New York Fashion Week.
“I hit my homie up from high school. He used to design for Gucci. … He sent me some designs. I loved them. I started putting them on everything,” Mann said. “And then everybody’s like, ‘Well, man, I really like that.’ And I’ve always been into fashion; like, I always try to dress nice—that’s just my thing. … So, I’m putting it [the logo] on everything and everybody’s like, ‘I would buy that, I would buy that, I would buy that.’ So, I’m like, ‘Well, why wouldn’t I start selling clothes?’ And then, sure enough, two years later, we were at New York Fashion Week.”
The two years between the start of MannMade’s fashion journey and getting to the Fashion Week runway didn’t come without hard work. Mann spends his weekdays working eight hours at his engineering job and then training kids for three to four hours—and that’s all before he does his own weightlifting at the gym and runs his clothing line. He’s often up until 2 or 3 a.m. working on the athleisure and talking to manufacturers.
“I have to say that I’m blessed,” Mann said. “The Lord has blessed me, like I said, with energy and he’s blessed me with opportunity.”
Some of the opportunities Mann was blessed with this year were pop-up shops where he sold clothes in the Omaha, Gretna and Benson areas and sponsoring a team at the TBT Basketball Tournament, which was televised on ESPN.
Mann also credits Creighton for his clothing line’s success.
“Just on a national level, going to Creighton … it’s in the middle of the country, [so] you meet a lot of different people from everywhere. And so, we were getting sales from all around the country … and it just kind of created the hype,” Mann said.
Despite all the time, energy and passion Mann has poured into his fashion work, he doesn’t remember exactly how he found the New York Fashion Week application. What he does remember is that he didn’t hear back for a few months, and he almost missed their call.
“They called me. I don’t pick up because I don’t have a New York number. I’m like, ‘Whose New York number is calling me?’ I think it’s a scam, but he leaves me a voicemail. … So, I call him back. … And he’s like, … ‘This is real.’ … We do a short, little interview, and then I get accepted.”
On Sept. 10, Mann got to model his own clothing line on the runway at New York Fashion Week. Alongside him was his partner, also modeling the clothing line, who he proposed to during the show.
He had been planning to propose since January, and when he got accepted to New York Fashion Week, it just felt right.
“I hit the producers up, asked them, they said it was cool. I hit her parents up, got their blessing. And, yeah, the rest is history,” Mann said, grinning.
The whole runway experience was one Mann appreciated.
“It was amazing. … I felt no nervousness,” Mann said. “The energy in the room was amazing. I felt like we practiced enough. We were prepared. So it was just go out there and make it happen.”
Mann said the aftermath of his Fashion Week experience has been great.
“It’s been cool to see the support. … I mean, [with] MannMade being out of Omaha, it’s like, ‘Okay, yeah, you can deal in the Omaha market. Maybe you can run the Omaha market, but how can you do on a global scale?’ And to be able to go to New York and really turn heads, … that was really cool,” Mann said.
Settling back into his routine in the wake of his time on the Fashion Week runway, Mann is focused on continuing to build on MannMade’s foundation, even though he doesn’t know exactly where that will take him.
“Just growing at a nice scale, growing at the Lord’s pace. … So, I say just keep building and keep going down the path that the Lord is leading me down, [and] we can’t be wrong,” Mann said.
And his advice for Creighton students and other young people?
“I’m just hopeful that my story inspires everybody else to put it in the work … [and] stop being so set on one thing in their life. I just did New York Fashion Week and everything I did this last year. And if you would’ve asked me three years ago if I would be doing this, I would have told you no,” Mann said. “So, I think that just letting the Lord lead you and following his path and being okay with not knowing what you want to do next—I think that’s huge. And then, for the young guys, for the guys that look like me and the guys that want to play sports in college or play pros: that’s not your only option. There’s so many more options you can take, and your brain is going to take you much further than your body would.”