Why am I studying fashion in London? Well, If you were looking for a short answer: I like making pretty things and then showing them to others. But since I have to write a whole paragraph about it, my answer would be “Because I got so depressed I could only draw and make collages for over two years. I didn’t want to do fine art, so going to a fashion school seemed natural.”
In all honesty, I never really even considered fashion as my future career. As a kid, you would never catch me saying: “I want to make beautiful dresses when I grow up.” My goals were a bit… more ambitious. I wanted to become the president of the Earth. Why not? The job is still vacant isn’t it?
I didn’t have the opportunity to share my plans, though. On the first weeks of school, it was explained that my ideas and way of thinking weren’t welcome and since being myself wasn’t always encouraged at home either, I had to learn to pretend to be somebody I wasn’t . Slowly , my mental health deteriorated. I had less and less energy to do the things I loved, until one day, I couldn’t get out of bed without feeling an excruciating pain throughout my body. That’s when I re-discovered art – the space where I could safely let all of my thoughts and emotions out without asking much from anybody or my body.
Fashion, in my eyes, is the highest form of self-acceptance and -expression and fashion designers are less obvious world-shapers. They have the power to challenge the ordinary and accepted, influence the eco crisis, social injustice, inequality, and all the “-isms” in the world. And since UAL is the best at teaching it’s students how to make a positive impact on the world through art, I packed everything I owned and came here, to London, to study fashion.