fashion design - post-course musings

2024-03-31

I took a fashion design course back in December at Central Saint Martin in London, and I wrote a little something about it. In two weeks, we went through the process of design, from a concept to a collection.

Here are some thoughts that occured to me afterwards:

On the last day, everyone prepared a sketch book and presented their work. The sketch book is a visual diary - it's supposed to document your process, show your progress, and tell a story. When reviewing everyone's collection, our tutor said that a lot of the times in the creative industries, it's not really about doing it the right or the wrong way, it's about "this kinda looks right, so we'll go with it."

In science, there certainly is at least a wrong way of doing things. So to me, a scientist, this is a massive learning point. It's liberating and terrifying at the same time. You can, technically, do almost whatever you want, but if it falls flat, if it doesn't speak to anyone, you probably have done something "wrong".

Many of my fellow students were in their twenties (i.e. younger than me). Many times have I thought about what my life would have been like if my creative side was nourished as much as my brainiac, studious side. Would I have been a young artist trying to find their voice in my twenties instead of being a PhD candidate pipetting transparent liquids at the bench?

On the other hand though, I have a hunch that if the twenty-something-year-old me had been an artist, she might have struggled to find the confidence to be herself and do authentic work. It is possible that she would have looked too much to the outside, to see what others are doing, or what's working, instead of putting herself in her work and showing it to the world. I'm still terrified of that, but with age comes a sense of "but what else can you be but yourself". You've lived and tested out other versions of you in numerous circumstances, and at the end, you're left with you. That's all you have. I'm sure there are some lucky ones who understand this in their bones from a young age. I am not sure I would have been one of them.

One question I keep getting whenever I say I took this course is a version of "so do you want to be a fashion designer now?", and I understand where the question is coming from, but I also am frustrated by it. My mindset going into this was I am curious about fashion and design, and I have a desire to explore, and I am lucky to have the time and money to do so. I didn't think too much about after the course, and which career moves I may or may not make.

Exploring for sake of exploring, without a career related agenda, seems fairly rare among adults, and it feels like you need a "reason" to do it, and a big "decision" to justify it afterwards. It is one of the many things that sucks about being an adult and it needs to stop.

Now that a couple of months have passed, I think the most captivating about the experience was, 1) the process of building something of your own, from scratch (in this case a collection of garments), and 2) figuring out the story you want to tell with your creation, and 3) letting the story culminate in a sense of purpose that gets out of bed and on your way in the morning.

I guess it goes hand in hand with my desire to cultivate more agency in my life.

Onwards.