The End

This is my last post for this session’s blog. These past three weeks went by very quickly. I enjoyed my classes this semester very much. I enjoyed learning new skills. I enjoyed some of the people who I met. I enjoyed my professors. These classes have given me a new motivation for fashion, a new motivation for pushing myself to do better. Who knows what I’ll do when I grow up but what I’ve realized is that at this point it doesn’t really matter. I’m not wasting time by taking these classes because I have all the time in the world. And even if I don’t use these skills in the future, I’m enjoying them now.

I’m sad that it’s over but I know I’ll be back, if not this fall or spring then definitely in the summer.

Thank you, good luck, and good-bye.

Sophia

What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?

What do you want to be when you grow up? A question asked to every single person under the age of 22 from their first day of kindergarten to the day they graduate college. I hate it because I think it’s a cop-out from adults who don’t know any other way to relate to kids. Who don’t know what to say or how to act so they try to relate in a way that they can understand. It’s a definition. A way to compartmentalized people into groups. All any of us want is definition. A way to explain everyone and everything.

I personally hate answering it because I feel some sort of commitment. Like after I say what I want to be that that’s it. That’s who I am and what I have to do. For the longest time when someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up the answer was plain and simple: a fashion designer. Now I have begun to change my mind. My definition of myself had changed, lines have been blurred, truths have been lost. My future isn’t so clear anymore. I don’t know what I want. Now my cop-out answer to that cop-out question is fashion designer because that’s simpler than the truth: I don’t know.

After writing this blog I have become interested in fashion journalism. Working for a magazine or some blog sounds like a lot of fun, who knows if in the next ten years there will still be real magazines.  I have turned into a thing I used to hate and have become what I thought I didn’t want, but what I realize now was that I didn’t know what I was talking about. I love writing about fashion, I love sharing my ideas with people. I have lost some motivation for sewing and designing but who knows. I have years ahead of me to decide, we all do. Nothing is really permanent. We put so much weight on decisions like college and career because we are afraid of making a mistake. But if we regarded these things with more of an open mind, and remembered that there is always room and time for a second chance, maybe things would be a little easier, and maybe we would all be a little happier.

Sophie

Starting off the Summer

Summer in New York City is never very much fun. The hot July sun beats down on the buildings, which in turn absorb the heat and effectively turns the city into an oven. FIT, located in midtown, is in the epicenter of this oven. Midtown is never a very pleasant place to be, with all the people and garbage and just general disparity, but during the summer it becomes something much more sinister. It becomes an unbearable wasteland of tourists and homeless people who are all baking in the oppressive heat. Thankfully, FIT is on a side street and has managed to cull together enough shade to create a nice sitting area for faculty or students or just passers-by. This July has been a little more bearable than the last, I find that I can enjoy myself more when the temperatures stay below 95 degrees.

This summer I am taking advanced sewing and advanced sketching. These classes entail sewing a denim jacket and a t-shirt and rendering many more fabrics and creating my own mini collection, respectively. And although I’m not really one for conversation I do enjoy listening to the people around me and I have found that many of my classmates have come from outside the city. Most from Long Island or New Jersey, but some traveling from as far away as Los Angeles or Paris. I found this to be true last year as well and it surprised me, the amount of people willing to travel thousands of miles just to take a summer class in a pre-college program. Not that FIT isn’t a great school, and not that there aren’t countless reasons to come, but I’m sure that there are local fashion or art schools in some of these areas. FIT has a certain pull for a lot of people. Maybe it’s the sirens of the city calling their names but for a lot of these kids they feel that FIT is the place for them, and are willing to go to great lengths to be in presence of this school. It is a great compliment to the atmosphere and the curriculum and the faculty.

I myself enjoy very much what I am learning and I enjoy being around my professors. I enjoy being in an atmosphere that promotes this kind of artistry. Even though I get a lot of that at school I like being around people who like all the same things as I do. It’s nice to really fit in somewhere.

Sophia

 

I Hate to Wake You Up to Say Goodbye

Well this is goodbye I guess. I don’t really know who I’m saying goodbye to because I’m not sure if anyone reads these posts except for maybe my mom and few of my fellow bloggers. But to be honest, I don’t really care. I did this more for myself than anyone else. It doesn’t matter to me how many people read what I write. I’ve used this as a platform to say what I want. To speak my mind and express thoughts and feelings about fashion and the world around me through a medium that is appropriate and in an environment that will respect me for what I have to say, because I have a lot to say.

I spent most of my time here writing in metaphors about New York and my observations and my loves and what I think it true. The truth can be very subjective at times. There’s your truth, then there’s someone else’s truth, and then there’s the truth. All different based on who you are and where you come from and what your agenda is. I truly enjoyed every minute of this. Writing this blog is what I enjoyed most about my time at FIT this Spring. I still don’t like bloggers, my opinion on that has not changed, but my opinion on myself has.

After writing this I’ve really begun to reconsider what I want to do with my career moving for ward. And while I absolutely do not have to decide now, I do very much enjoy writing and fashion journalism. The fashion world has so many complex layers. It is fluid and open but incredibly ruthless. It is not for everyone. I might even find that it’s not right for me. I don’t know and none of us will ever know until the do or die moment comes, and we see it all presented in front of us, then we will see what it right.

“All my bags are packed, I’m ready to go, I’m standing here outside your door, I hate to wake you up to say goodbye, but dawn is breakin’ it’s early morn, the taxi’s waitin’ he’s blowin’ his horn, already I’m so lonesome I could cry.”  – John Denver

Thank you very much.

Sophia

The Working Man

Menswear, particularly men’s street wear, is something I find very interesting. I like looking at men and seeing the way they dress and what looks good on them. Construction workers in particular are a whole interesting group that deserve more attention than they get. They are gritty and dirty and real. Their clothes are a reflection of their work in the practicality of it. They seem to have their own definition of who they are. I don’t mean to talk about construction workers as a different species of human, it is a profession, and maybe to them it doesn’t define who they are. But in the same way you look at a group of business men and place a blanket statement over them, I look at construction workers and have something to say that I feel can apply to all of them.

Construction is everywhere in New York. The scaffolding in front of my school just came down a few months ago after being there for more than six years. Streets are being constantly torn up, facades of buildings being transformed, new ones being built. As much as the skyline seems to be constantly developing, one thing that never changes are the men who work on these projects. I’m talking about construction workers. We all know that Construction Workersfamous photograph of a group of young men hanging from the metal interior of a building hundreds of feet above the ground. The men in that picture fall somewhere between impossibly cool and utterly foolish.

Although the general uniform has changed over the years, the general feeling that construction workers carry throughout their respective eras has not. I see them every day on the subway, everyday on my way to school. They are rugged, like an urban lumberjack. During the winter you see them trapped in layers of sweatshirts and long underwear, and during the summer they strip down to t-shirts, showing their bare arms. Their hands are calloused and broken. Some carry strong and slim torsos, others hold a belly of beer. In a world and in a time when gender and sexuality and identity are all so subjective, I believe that when you look at a construction worker you are looking at a man. Back to the olden days of Cowboys and Indians and Clint Eastwood. I don’t mean to put a whole group of people in a box, I’m not saying that this the rule, or even the truth, this is just my truth.

Construction workers carry a sense of pride with them, you can see it in the way they hold themselves. They are confident. They know exactly what they are capable of, and have a sense of proficiency. Even if their job is cutting 2 by 4s or nailing two pieces of wood together, they know what they are doing. They look put together because they’re style comes out of necessity. They don’t necessarily care how they look, but they have to wear certain things just for the mechanics of their job. Tighter fitting clothes so as not to get in the way, but loose enough that they can work in them.

In fashion you can find inspiration literally everywhere. I find it in the diverse culture of the people around me. Maybe you can find it in the architecture of buildings or the delicate shape of flower petals. Whatever it is make it yours. Keep it close to you and don’t worry about what everyone else is doing.

Sophia