Diary of an Emo Fashion Student: My Experience in Fashion School

I never thought I would be doing this to be honest. I was set to be an engineer for most of my life and I was okay with that. I was going to be a black female engender and I was gonna make money doing a hard science job. Well, turns out I was going to be none of those things. (Well, I’m still black so two out of three). I though my relationship with fashion would have stopped with the shopping addiction inherited from my mother, and those imagine fashion designer games on the ds I plaid as a child.

It wasn’t until I started cosplaying of all things did things started to change for me. I was starting to create things I liked and cared about. The sense of pride I felt taking pictures in my anime character costumes and being able to say “I made this with my own to hands” was astronomical. It was during the back half of high school the only thing that made me happy. I knew I wanted to do something that allowed me to keep feeling that way. A couple of google searches and essays later I was enrolled in fashion school.

I don’t know what I expected really, to be honest I never paid much attention to fashion. I didn’t know all of the name brands and designers; I to this day have still never seen the devil wears Prada. I only knew the random smatterings of alt fashion communities across the internet. In truth I guess my lack of an expectations made me believe it was going to be easy. Not extremely but nothing like the fancy hard science careers I had been preparing for since 5th grade.

I honestly was terrified. I was gonna walk into this fashion school and be with all these people who probably know what they are doing and I’m gonna be like “I’m hi. I dress up like anime characters and you can’t major in cosplay so maybe I could do costumes. Or something. I just want to make stuff and pay rent my guys.”

Well, I’m not interested in being anything other than honest here, so you are going to get my fashion school hot takes.

If anyone tells you that fashion school is easy, they are a liar. A giant, giant pants a flame liar. I had a friend who was prelaw and for the past 3 years I have consistently had a higher workload than her. People tell me they never see me not working on something and they’re right. There is always something that needs to be done and you don’t always know how I’m even going to do it. It can be overwhelming and scary. To be frank I was not good at stuff instantly, and the former gifted kid in me does not like that.

I’m not going to lie it got to be almost too much. I wasn’t happy. Everything was going so fast, and my mental health was spiraling. (Apparently if you manage to be extremely high achieving for your entire school career with undiagnosed ADHD by the time you reach college you are clinically burned out) I was having a crisis and I decided that what I was doing wasn’t working and I have to change something.

I kinda felt out of place. I felt like I was on a different wavelength than other people in my classes and that’s not to be quirky. My inspiration and perspective on fashion was so much different than everyone else’s. Not to say that’s bad because it’s not. It just no one is going to have the conversation I want to have about Mana-Sama’s contribution to Visual Kei in almost all aspects of the genre and him nearly completely shaping the modern gothic lolita landscape with me.  Who is going to talk to me about the aesthetic differences between the different goth sub styles?

I’ve been trying to make myself understand that these things about me make me special and stand out and such (I watched monster high, I know what’s up.) but it still does feel lonely. And then you add the whole black and gay and trans thing at it feel like I’m operating on a different plane of existence and feeling so out of place. I am very much trying to make conversation in a completely new area.

I came to a crossroads. And I sat in the metaphorical center of the road and looked up into the sky trying to figure it all out.

I came to the realization that I came here for myself. If I was doing it for anyone else, I would be at some mechanical engineering program who knows where. I made the choice then and there I was going to go back to the point of it all. I wanted to make things that I could feel proud of. I felt like I had been trying to fit and change myself because I wasn’t confident enough in my own existence. And when you do this kind of labor-intensive work that just won’t cut it. You have to have something driving you, you have to care about what you are doing in order to push through those long nights full of homework. It had felt like I was slaving away for hours on end for somebody else’s work.

I decided I was going to embrace myself as cheesy as it sounds. I was going to take these key parts of myself, the black queer goth who likes anime and costumes, and put them into my work fully. Live queerly in all senses. In my mind that is to be fully and gleefully in opposition to how the world wants you to be.

So, I just started doing stuff I wanted. I made the femboy nature themed line for my partner, I made the accessory collection inspired by my favorite manga, I am making my transmasculine lounge wear collection, I’m making my collection that scene/ emo inspired with a sprinkling of Visual Kei for flavor, and you probably don’t even  know what half of that means and I don’t care! Which is great, because now I get to show you.

I am much happier now. I’m not gonna say it made the work easier because like hell it did, but I can say that I made handling it that much easier. I can push through because I have a passion for what I’m doing.