My high school is very art-centric, more money gets poured into the art departments than any of the sports teams. I guess that comes with the location, there aren’t many places to play football in the middle of Manhattan. I’m lucky in this way, I myself being more artistic than athletic, I have had many opportunities to showcase my talent.

I work in the drama department, making and designing costumes for my school plays. While most of what this entails is working with the director to make a costume plot, then thrifting for cheap versions of what you came up with, and altering that to fit the actor, it’s hard work, and a lot of people play it off as being easy. I highly recommend doing something like this for anyone interested in fashion design. It has helped me with technical skills, working within a budget, and how to design collaboratively. Also, your work is very appreciated, and gawked over because you can do something that a lot of people can’t do. You can make something out of nothing. Take something out of fantasy and into real life, even though sewing is, honestly, a really fundamental skill.

Being able to make clothes was a job expected of women and girls not even 100 years ago. It has become something so distant and other worldly. It has become an art form rather than a necessary craft. This isn’t something I’m complaining about, it has turned fashion into a real profession, something you can base your life off of. This I am thankful for. Fashion has given me a purpose, something to look forward to in the future, a goal to strive for. I tend to hold it a little to highly, fashion, make it seem like something it isn’t. Because when you strip away the layers, what fashion really is, is a business. And like all businesses there is a clock in the center of it, ticking away, like a heart counting down its last beats. In fashion, this clock, this heart, is design, and designers, the people who create the looks themselves. Without designers there would be nothing. So we must thank the men and women who toil away, designing our clothes, because without them the thing we love so much would be… nothing.

Sophia