I thought I was going to see Natural Wonder Beauty Concept. During my first week alone in London, I figured the subdued soundscapes of Ana Roxanne and DJ Python would calm my nerves, surrounded by other artsy folks in their Institute of Contemporary Arts. However, due to my inexperience with the building and some very stern bouncers, I ended up at something even more pretentious: a perfume launch. They were digging their hands into ice–cream cakes the size of my torso, they were in baroque corsets and custom suits, there was a girl in lingerie reading Anaïs Nin. Despite wearing just a flannel and some jeans—being by myself, by accident in this fantastical and unreal space—I felt right at home. I felt like I was supposed to be there, among people older than me, but peers I aspire to be. I kept that feeling when dancing with Central Saint Martins’ graduate students at Howl Pride or chatting up the manager at Machine–A. That indescribable settling down of, “Ah, these are my people.”
Being with these people confirmed something in me. I’ve always wanted to have impeccable taste as a way of proving my self–worth. While I might not feel so confident in myself, I can point to my acquired knowledge and accumulated palate as a way of feeling “better than thou.” I sympathize with the emotion in that noise rock album or I see the beauty in that photo of an asshole. The harder to understand, the more removed from the common, the more seemingly pointless, the better. It’s not a farce to me: I do feel a kinship and affinity toward the obscure and marginal, the avant–garde and absolute kitsch that fuels your least favorite roommate in Bushwick. And, as my brief foray in London helped uncover just a bit more, I find community in the most ridiculous sphere: fashion.
I’ve wanted to work in fashion for some time now, but I’ve never been quite sure where to start. Trying to design with only one sewing lesson from my grandma doesn’t feel quite right, nor does strict business analytics. Yet, I can’t help but find myself growing my mental encyclopedia of the best of SS25 in my free time. Can’t avoid learning every shuffle in the creative director deck. Can’t help but want to be able to identify everyone’s outfits.
Penn just doesn’t feel like the most welcoming place to pursue the field. Making the difficult choice to apply to a traditional liberal arts school (maybe to please my parents or to make use of how much I sacrificed for my academics in high school) prevented me from developing a portfolio senior year and climbing the ranks at Parsons or Pratt. I’ve found a bit of a home in the history of art major, but it would certainly make more sense to make the painful transfer into marketing at Wharton, or at the least, economics in the College. I haven’t even allocated space in my schedule for the consumer psychology minor, which every future marketer seems to have at this school. Clubs don’t help either. The WALK is more a passion project than a career–launcher. The Wharton Retail Club feeds into buying or selling internships, jobs that would feel the same if the good traded was grapes just as much as crepe gowns. Having recently quit the Penn Fashion Collective, I felt like I would’ve had to sacrifice my academic and social life to produce more than a cobbled–together look. There’s no clear path the way there is for investment banking or engineering: It’s really up to the work I do myself and the connections I make in the meantime.
Connecting on campus the way I was able to in London can feel like a challenge. I can’t just wander into spaces like I did there or meet aspiring designers at a frat afters. What is “cool” feels more guarded by what organizations you’re a part of as opposed to your actual passion or interests. Physical spaces are safeguarded by a convoluted and luck–based who–you–know complex, and who is really willing to connect over a joint struggle like fashion if you’re not providing more than companionship and camaraderie? It means you might have to face where your education and your peers around you are failing you instead of stuffing it behind “Penn Face” and pretending everything is fine. Maybe it’s my own insecurities—and I know just how much that can limit me—but sometimes, it feels like this campus is hostile to someone who really wants to do the hard work of having taste and go to the 20–person house shows and befriend local musicians, instead of just aligning themselves with campus leaders who can give them the social currency of a veneer of cool. It’s something to put on your Instagram story, yet maybe not something helping you grow or understand the world.
That is why I want to be in fashion and be a pretentious asshole more than anything in the world. In order to get there, one must suffer. By truly understanding the world in the hardships of being creative, developing skills, and connecting with others, you develop a true nonchalance putting your soul out there in the form of art. Not pretending you don’t care for the sake of feeling better about yourself—which I have certainly fallen victim to—but caring so much that criticism rolls off your back. Having unwavering faith in what you’re doing, even if it’s just worrying over flat–felled versus French seams or whether oxblood might be better than merlot. Taking pride in manifesting a physical deposit of what you think in the world, or at the very least, helping those who do, because you know that revealing the truth that only a visual can communicate might help someone else better understand the world, and maybe even change it.
That is the lodestar of my life. I don’t know how I’m going to get there yet, but I know how I want my life to be characterized and the type of people to I want to share it with: those who care and are willing to experience turbulence and pain in order to get it. When Cherry Cheng, owner of Jouissance Parfums, told me she knew me from somewhere as I was leaving her launch, I didn’t know whether that was a polite lie or a real confusion after hours of socializing, but it felt right. You might not have known me yet, Cheng, but you will now.
