First Proto

To me, fashion has always been multifaceted. It is personal expression and basic necessity. It is art and commerce. It is joy, aspiration, exclusion, excess. It is fast, it is changing, and it is hurting the planet. I see all of it, and I’ve never been able to see it simply.

There is sparkle here too the kind that draws you in, just before you notice the edges.

That complexity has been there from the beginning.

Growing up in Ohio, fashion mostly lived indoors. Outfits were worn from my bedroom to the living room. Going out meant youth group, the movies, or a bonfire on a Friday night. And yet, even in that small radius, I styled myself deliberately. I stood out, not because I wanted attention, but because I couldn’t stop expressing ideas through clothes.

It won’t surprise anyone that I loved the city. There, I didn’t stick out. I was just another body moving through a crowd.

As a kid, I was inspired by the runway, though I never expected to buy designer clothing off the rack. What I did expect was that becoming a fashion designer might eventually allow me access to that world. That assumption turned out to be naïve but I was eighteen.

Fashion is an industry, but fashion designers rarely make the money associated with it. It is an old trade in that way: the artists and visionaries are often siloed from the cash. Many spend years climbing a wobbly, sometimes abusive ladder while watching other industries reward their workers handsomely right out of the gate. We tend to accept that jobs devoted to beauty will be poorly paid.

When I was choosing a path, being a full-time artist didn’t feel viable. Design felt more logical. I loved drawing, sewing, inventing, styling. I didn’t dream of getting rich I wanted stability. I thought making attractive clothing would be satisfying. That was an oversimplification, but it was an honest one.

Today, I still can’t afford most designer clothing even as a designer. That reality makes me sad, not bitter. It is simply part of the truth.

What does trouble me is how taken for granted clothing has become. Most consumers don’t see the steps, the stages, the number of hands and decisions involved in making a single garment. The t-shirt and jeans you are wearing right now passed through countless minds and bodies before reaching you.

Of course, the same could be said for many things. A bottle of shampoo, for example. But I don’t make shampoo. I make clothes.

This blog is about my industry.It is about the things that often go unsaid in a system I have grown up inside; the contradictions, the desires, the labor, the beauty, and the cost. I am not here to offer simple answers. I am here to look honestly, and to slow the conversation down enough that it can be felt.

It isn’t as pretty on the inside. But when you’ve worked so hard on the stitching and the seams, sometimes you want to wear it inside out.

This is an invitation to peek inside,

to see the work, the drive, and the compromises that keep things moving.