Occupation: Fashion Designer

What do you want to be when you grow up?  As a side note I have only just found the answer to that and I am in my early 30’s.  Lately I have been thinking about all the things I thought I wanted to be when I was growing up.  I never seemed to want the stock standard things everyone else wanted.  The girls all wanted to be teachers, nurses and mums but not me.  I had other plans. 

In Year 7 I was determined that I was going to be a fashion designer.  Of course I had no interest in fashion or clothes and spent all my time outside of school in jeans and t-shirts,  but in my mind, I wanted to be a fashion designer.  I vividly remember during a Religious class sketching away my collection.  I cannot draw, but with a purple pen and my yellow pad (does anyone else who went to high school in the 90’s remember the coloured writing pad craze?) I drew a singlet, shirt, skirt, dress and pants all with some silly flower design on it (again, hello 90’s).  The teacher busted me.  He asked me to put the pen down, came over and held up the pad.  I don’t remember what he said, but I remember he showed the entire class and they all laughed at me.  For the rest of the week I was picked on for wanting to be fashion designer.  

I wasn’t de-railed.  In Year 8 when we could chose our electives I choose Textiles and Design.  I wanted to be the best in the whole grade.  While I did well in the theory of it, the actually design part, not so great.  Sure I showed great skill in sewing, sewing is quite analytical and I am good at things like that.  But I also showed a total lack of imagination and zero creative design.  I stuck with the basics and what was safe.  My Year 8 work was a simple red skirt.  Year 9 was a tracksuit; black pants, plain red top.  Year 10 was an Asian inspired dress, again it was the 90’s, it was also the same pattern at least 10 other girls had chosen. 

The second half of Year 10 was when my creative talent really emerged.  We were all given a white shirt to design and show case just how talented we were.  I tie-dyed mine emerald green and using the fancy sewing machine with built-in patterns, covered the whole thing in metallic green embroidered leaves (perhaps this was an early indication of my inner hippy).  I had no idea what I was thinking.  I thought I was talented and creative but it looked like something poorly made out of Nimbin.  It was crap.  And it was then that I looked around at all the wonderfully designed shirts from other students, and then at my horrible green and white mess that wouldn’t even make it on a worst dressed list, and then I realised I shouldn’t continue on with my Textiles and Design course.  Fashion designer I just wasn’t meant to be.

I can laugh at all this now.  I still enjoying sewing when I have the time, but I like to stick with the basics and keep it simple.  Just make classics and leave it at that.  I could never have been a fashion designer, I think to be one requires the opposite personality to what I have.  I am very creative, but not visually, and after 3 solid years I still couldn’t draw the silhouette of the female form on which to sketch my “designs”.  Fortunately I learnt this lesson early on and didn’t bother pursuing it any further after Year 10, and I am sure my teachers equally breathed a sign of relief with that knowledge.