blooming

For as long as I can remember I have been obsessed with clothes. I know most teenage girls are obsessed with clothes, but I was really obsessed. Fashion consumed me. Early inspiration included: the Jade Bratz doll, early 2010s Vanessa Hudgens at Coachella, Elizabeth Swan from Pirates of the Caribbean, the Renaissance Faire, Tibetan import stores on Haight and Ashbury and every wook, hippie girl at San Francisco State University.  I loved Teen Vogue and Tumblr and Gossip Girl and Pinterest and gathering inspiration for… for what I didn’t know yet. 

 As a teenager I used to yearn to have been born in a different time, forced to wear corsets and long skirts everyday. I couldn’t explain why I wanted this so bad but I did. I loved the millennial trend of the bohemian maxi skirt because it was the only socially acceptable thing I felt I could wear that made me feel like a victorian woman when I was too shy and embarrassed to wear what I truly wanted to wear. I love how when you wear a floor length skirt and walk up stairs or run, you have to hold the skirt up so you don’t trip on it. That movement, of lifting the skirt up, it’s so feminine and regal. The clothes you wear change your behavior and your body movements even if you don’t realize it. 

My grandfather was a fashion designer, but he died before me or my brother were born. When me and my brother grew up, we both, in our own separate ways, became fashion designers. I really do believe that I am a channel for this form of art to pass through in this lifetime. I believe I was destined to be a fashion designer. My mother was a model and has always been fashionable and not afraid to express herself. The only difference between me and my mom is I like to shop at the Goodwill bins and she only does designer.

Although I had a wild imagination, I was terrified of standing out, as most young women are. I was popular, I guess, or at least desperately tried to be. I was a cheerleader. And then in a sorority. I was always with a big group of girlfriends. I couldn’t bare the thought of being without my girlfriends. Even just to go pee at a party. It was like if I was alone for five seconds a party or something, everyone would see me and think I was a friendless loser. Every Friday morning in high school me and my friends would flip open our Envies and Chocolates to message each other, getting approval for the outfit of the day. If someone wanted to wear a skirt or a dress instead of shorts or pants, they would NEED someone else to wear a skirt as well. Outfit coordination was vital to our existence. If we were going to be bold (we rarely were), we were going to be bold together. 

I always had such a grand vision for my outfits as a teenager, but I didn’t always execute. Maybe because I was working with a paycheck from my hostess job at IHOP and didn’t lose my baby fat until my early 20s. But I wanted to blend in more than I wanted to follow my inspiration. I wanted boys to think I was hot and cool and normal and someone you could ask to prom. This way of thinking carried over into my adult life. College was the same way, just in a new city with new girlfriends. But when I was 25 years old, I moved to Los Angeles and lived by myself for the first time. That was when it all changed. It was the best transition of my life but also the hardest. I didn’t realize how dependent I was on my friends until I lived in a city without them, without anyone really. 

There were small moments when I began to transform: while settling into my first studio apartment in Hollywood, unpacking my clothes, playing dress-up as Sleeping Beauty played on my TV not yet mounted onto the wall. While deciding what to wear for my orientation for my new job at the Renaissance Faire (I remember it exactly: a brown tiered maxi skirt, a colorful tank top made from hemp that I got at a hippie store in Santa Cruz and a pair of small turquoise dangly earrings.)  While going on my first couple of solo camping trips; as someone that actively detests athliesure wear, it was often earth tones, mini skirts, linen halter tops, bikinis. I could finally decide what to wear based on my mood that day instead of the self-implemented restrictions of having to fit in with my friends. The changes in my appearance might have seemed minute to the untrained eye, but they were so liberating to me. 

Now that I allowed myself this new freedom dressing however the hell I wanted to, I quickly realized the clothes I wanted to wear didn’t exist. I remember, after my first tour with Toro y Moi as the merch girl, I flew back home feeling inspired but also jealous. Everyone I met on that tour was an artist of some kind; musicians, photographers, muralists, chefs. By that point in my life, I had experimented with a lot of different art forms. Painting, drawing, even making side tables out of slabs of wood I found on the side of the road. But none of those activities got me high. So, I bought a sewing machine. And then, shortly after was COVID 19; endless hours of isolation and free time. It was perfect. 

My first couple projects were atrocious. I saved them to remember how far I have come, which I highly recommend to any new seamstresses, no matter how much you will want to burn your early work, one day it will make you smile. I hated sewing in the beginning. It bothered me how delicate you had to be with the fabric, how you couldn’t always pull it super tightly to achieve a straight line. Instead you have to mold the fabric to achieve the desired affect, like sculpting with clay rather than carpentry and nail guns. It is a flow rather than brute force. 

I failed at sewing for years until I decided to go to trade school for fashion design and take a clothing construction course. School was 7am-12pm five days a week, so, a major commitment. I worked whatever side gigs I could and sewed all day at school and all night in my garage. I didn’t know how to stop, even when I had to pee or was hungry. I was addicted to improving my craft. After one semester, I dropped out of school and got a full-time normie job in fashion. Work all day, sew all night and on weekends. I have been doing that for the last three years. I think I am still learning how to sew, which fabrics to use for what, there is so much to learn. Thats why all the good seamstresses are old ladies. 

My sewing was just the tool, I was the creator of this world. I started making corsets and big skirts. I began to wear them out to parties in LA where I didn’t know anyone. People dug it. They didn’t just dig it though, they understood it. They understand the world of pirates and mermaids and fairies and witches and all of this fantasy world that excites me so. Like the worlds that J.K Rowling built or the characters that Helen Bonham Carter plays or Tim Burton’s animation, all of these artists that built entire worlds, that’s what motivates me. 

It took me so long to achieve this level of freedom, but this caterpillar really became a butterfly.