1/20/25

Senior year for a fashion student is more than a little different from the typical projects, assignments, and finals for most normal—and even some art—majors. Rather than packing up our books and spending all-nighters hunched over a table filled with catalogs of notes, related textbooks, and an estimated 15 tabs open on Google Chrome, we spend all our time, free and otherwise, cooped up in a studio with only each other, and the faint hum of the yellow-toned overhead lights keeping us company - all for a few final moments seeing your pieces walk down the runway at Scottsdale Fashion Square. Where most majors have professors who give a high workload with the assumption that, after four years of higher education, you will be able to manage to complete it and potentially have a life otherwise, fashion students get lectured that, while water and food are technically necessities, fashion reigns supreme. We are expected to sacrifice what we can - and a little bit more - in order to create work that is worth observation, much less worth taking note of. 

This harsh truth has been an even harsher reality for the last four years and despite wavering interest in being a working member of the fashion design process itself, I have been anticipating such a lifestyle since the end of my freshman orientation. The process of getting to where I am with my final collection has naturally been a wave of drafts and disposals, but after approximately four years of trial and error, and a particularly rough stint in a year-long identity crisis spurred on by a hell-like creation designed specifically to torment my identity as a whole, I began to confidently settle into an artistic expression of my "self" that felt authentically authentic. I wanted to create something that reflected who I am, my life, and what I've experienced, but I also wanted to take what will most likely be my final opportunity to do so with little to no restraints to full advantage and go beyond just a collection that reflects my personal style. It will be literary, it will be analytical, it will be Appalachian, but most importantly, it will be "me". Being a student in any manner of the artistic industry requires a level of self-acknowledgment that few other industries do, however, it's this level of self-assuredness that we are all striving for that is equally what slowly kills us. While having confidence in what you make is admittedly the most important trait to possess, one also has to consider what happens when "who you are" as an art form simply isn't as "cool" as who someone else is. The competition of it all makes even the most confident of us quiver in their knickers, intimidated by the possibility that no matter how authentic an art form is, it won't be able to compete with an art form that is undeniably "in" right now. Though these moments of self-doubt are lapses I struggle to believe anyone can ever truly be immune to, I have managed to reach a level of self-assuredness that the version of me who existed 365 days ago never would have believed was possible. I am far from the most confident I have ever been, but what I am is someone who knows what I want, and is no longer quite as scared to attain it. A large, if not most, of that confidence is reflected in my art, and my ability to be proud of it where no one else can be in the same way. However, one element of the harshness that is art school, is a professor's ability to shake such confidence with a singular off-handed remark made in passing on a random Tuesday afternoon. 

After a full semester of laying down the groundwork, and what's more, completing two of the five looks I had spent the last two semesters idealizing, my professor thought it was due time for some feedback. Given that I have two looks yet to complete, it makes sense that she would think I had more than enough room to plan some changes in my lineup. The issue I encounter is that part of such confidence in my work being attained, I have already told myself most of the feedback my professors give me. Not to say I know better - I know I know very little in comparison -  rather, I have yet to receive feedback that felt in alignment with anything I'm very interested in. As I turn the corner to skip down the three floors and exit a building I already feel I've spent a lifetime in, my favorite professor of all time turns the adjacent corner and I'm faced with a professional interaction I was not yet mentally prepared for. Irina is a Georgian woman and an endlessly talented one at that. I first met her during a class I had taken instead of an internship orchestrated to be a focus on knitwear rather than the cut-and-sew technique that a majority of my classes had taught me every semester prior. She spoke with an accent, and despite my inability to thoroughly process some of her words, and her inability to understand what Im trying to convey in response, she understood me on a deeply artistic level. We both love art for the sake of art, for its ability to translate meanings and messages without words; the issue is, that we go about making such art in very different ways. Likewise to the intimation, many a fashion student endures trying to make art that is expressive of themselves but also stands out in a crowd of 100 other students doing the same, professors struggle not to grade said art through their own lens of how they would've gone about it themselves. After she hugged for a split second too long, and we exchanged wishes of a happy holiday, she got a serious look on her face. She told me that was loving what I had made so far, but she wanted to see more. Play with the weight of the fabric more, the skirt length, make the colors more repetitive and intentional, all of which I thought I had done - in the way I wanted to - already. She then said something I'm still toiling over a week later.

 
"I want to see you not be afraid to go out of your comfort zone".

I cannot stress enough the severity of which I want to be a writer. I want my career to consist of cafes and offices, writing rooms, and red-marked pages. I want to attend book signings and I want to write a weekly anecdote about a certain style, designer, or artistic theme I had noticed in the week prior, and how that will impact the art of the weeks to come. I want my attachment to fashion to be likewise to that of someone's eclectic aunt, a person who thoroughly enjoys, understands, and consumes fashion at an alarming rate, yet doesn't participate in its creation from the inside. Of course, I love fashion more than many things, and if given the opportunity, would love to work on a craftsman level at some designer New York City location. But, as of right now, I have no plans to do what I'm doing academically on a professional level. In every way shape and form, everything that I am doing for this collection is out of my comfort zone. I have pushed myself more than I ever have before, and plan to do so even more over the last few months. The love I have for designing and making clothes cant be put into words in a way that does the passion I feel deeply engrained in my bones the justice it deserves, but whether it is the environment, the industry as a whole, or the simple knowledge that I couldn't make it, my career is focused elsewhere. Yet throughout my tenure as a fashion student, this has been my most consistent feedback. Do more. Don't be afraid. Go out of your comfort zone. 

This line of thinking makes sense when giving consideration to those aspiring designers who need to keep an eye out for buyers, and those who themselves want to consume their art. However, the harsh reality of my specific situation is that I was simply too far in to change my mind. I didn't realize until my second semester of Sophomore year that writing was something I loved more than the homework I utilized it for made me aware of, and it took even longer to realize that writing was something I wanted to do for the rest of my life. My school is one of accommodation, in that, you have to accommodate for its shortcomings by making the most out of it as possible. In my life, that looks like doing everything I can to prove my knowledge and experience within fashion, so that when I'm writing about it I can have a rare informed opinion rather than a spewing of textual information cited from other fashion journalists. It means taking my education seriously so that when my resume is handed in with a school known for partying written on top of it, I can be taken more seriously than that. It means doing a collection because I enjoy doing it, and want to do it for my final, but not because I want to make a name for myself as a newly graduated designer looking for work. When I make clothes, it stems from a place of love for the craft, and passion for the subject, and not from a desire to see my work anywhere near that of a professional. I could push harder, and do more, but the issue is that knowing those things won't produce good work; wanting to do them well. It's this very thought that makes Irina's comment to me resonate so profoundly. Because since the start of the previous semester, my work has only evolved more from its initial conception. I've thought extensively about how I can do more, be more intentional, and push out of my comfort zone, but not because of what anyone else is thinking about my work, in fact, I have received significantly less backlash to much of my work than I was expecting, especially in comparison to the work I was producing two years ago. Rather, I want to do those things because I want to see the best of me walking down the runway in a few months. If that means I have a look that hasn't changed since I finished it in November, then that means it is exactly as I want it to be. If that means I scrap an entire look, it's because I know I can be more authentic, more creative, and more expressive than I thought myself capable of a few months ago. And I think that is what Irina meant when she told me to do more. Not to take what I had made and make it more elevated, but to do more in the sense of more "me", to hone in on what the vision is to ensure within myself that I have done the most. 

Above all else, senior year is a time for reflection; a time to take account of all the things we've, done, could've done, would've done, and the things we wouldn't change even if we had the choice. One constant throughout the last century is the ability to look back and say "What was I wearing?"; likewise these moments of reflective doubt in your decisions are heavily intertwined throughout the entirety of fashion. Its this reason that authenticity is so important, especially when your authenticity is represented throughout your education, career, and self. Having the opportunity to present such a raw image of yourself is, for many, once in a lifetime, and that is why it's so important for me not to miss out, even if doing it for the rest of my life isn't something I'm necessarily striving toward right now. I want to make art that is true, not only to who I am but true to what it is I actually want to make, free of the impression or influence of those who expected something else. Having friends, and especially, professors who understand that part of me is so necessary to creating art, in any form, and I feel incredibly lucky to feel as though I know myself well enough to communicate that to them as well.