I hated majoring in Fashion. OK, maybe hate is a strong word because honestly, I don’t hate much in life. I’m a lover not a fighter. But man, it just wasn’t for me at the time. My young, inexperienced ego found it silly. Maybe it was my punk aesthetic rebelling against high fashion and couture designers, those who looked up to it, and my bitter professors who just took it so damn seriously. Eat the rich, let them eat cake, blah blah blah.
I mean, my homework was to head up to Fifth Avenue, stand in front of the Versace windows, and begrudgingly draw fashion illustrations inspired by what I was looking at (spoiler…I wasn’t inspired). In contrast, I was thoroughly enjoying reading and writing about existential and philosophical ideology in my electives and free time, so…..yeah.
Now, the sewing and pattern making skills I learned in Parsons, I also abandoned. I still have my vintage Japanese commercial grade heavy duty sewing machine, but it sat in closets, moving from apartment to apartment through my 20’s and then to the basement of our first house in my 30’s. Finally resurfacing when my husband and I renovated a vintage camper and I naively tackled sewing new zippered seat cushions for the dinette
And something happened. Sewing was FUN again, or maybe just fun for the first time ever. When I was younger I equated sewing and pattern making with my disdain for design school, flashbacks of being yelled at for wonky lines or lifting my scissors off the drafting table. But really, I now see these skills are just artistic tools, just another medium like gouache, clay, or pastels. I can create whatever I want!
With mistakes, but still…
In the last 15 years since this renewed love of sewing, I’ve, very sporadically and irregularly, taken on tailoring my own clothes (it’s too long! I hate those sleeves! Cheesey buttons! Can I make this skirt into pants?!) I’ve made Charlotte little toddler dresses out of punk rock tees. Turned dresses into skirts and skirts into pants. I’m building an unhealthy amount of fixings, fabric, and embellishments for the thought of what could possibly be…
More recently I’ve been experimenting with upcycling clothing. Taking thrifted stuff and redesigning them into something else. I discoverd goodwill by the pound in NJ and holy moly, guilt free experimenting here we come! So far I took pieces of a cheesey 90’s denim dress and made it onto a bag, and I’m really close to flipping a 70’s turkish terry handtowel into something, I think.
What’s that Hawking quote again….”The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge”. I only half know what I’m doing but I hope to fill up this space having fun with my design school dropout skills!
Make! My Mistake 