My ticket to FIT

This is the essay I submitted for my application to FIT, which fortunately for me, helped me get in. It illustrates how I feel about fashion, and why I am here in NYC doing what I love.

I push open the door and walk doe eyed, into the store. As my heart rate quickens, I can feel the plush carpet beneath my feet, smell the perfumes pumped into the air, and catch the glimpses of the Swarovski crystals as they refract the light. I stare in awe at a blonde woman in the back of the store, slipping on that breathtaking Carolina Herrera ball gown. My eyes wander to the hangers and my finger runs along the fabrics, smooth silk, rough tulle, soft feathers…and suddenly I stop breathing because of what I see. There, a meager six inches from my own foot, is a pair of Manolo Blahniks. Manolo’s, the shoe of choice for Galliano runway shows, the shoe said to “lengthen the leg from the hip all the way down to the toe cleavage”, the Mona Lisa of shoes, and I am staring at it.
It is in these moments that I am able to float in and out of high end boutiques that my smile reaches from Paris to New York. These moments are when I stop talking and just relax, taking everything in, from the ceiling to the floor shelves, hangers and boxes filled with the most beautiful things I have ever seen. I have a hard time determining what is more artistically influential for me, my trip to the Louvre or my time in this mall filled with everything I aspire to be. When staring at the red oversized quilted Chanel clutch, I have to muster up the ability to hold back tears. I realize that the sales clerks see me gawking at the beautiful purses knowing that the girl in the Old Navy cardigan and American Eagle shorts couldn’t possibly purchase anything, or appreciate what surrounds her…well, she has one thing right. The majority of the items in the boutique could have paid for my associate’s degree at community college, but she is wrong too. If there is one thing I can appreciate, one thing I know, one thing I love, it is fashion.
Like every “wanna be” designer, I cut up fabrics as a kid and pasted them on paper making my own designs, not realizing this would be a skill I would try to perfect 10 years down the road. I knew Vogue was the Bible; book marked Style.com on my computer, and watched every fashion show that ever aired on TV. I knew I loved it, I knew I wanted the life…but I knew there were obstacles. When I was 15 I went to the occupational outlook handbook online and nearly cried when I saw a 1% projected growth within the industry in the next 10 years….1%. I was going to have to have an edge. So that’s precisely what I did, I worked for that edge.
Whenever I had extra money in the states, I would drive myself to the nearest book store (Borders can thank me for half of its revenue within the past five years) and burry my nose in the fashion and art books, and meticulously decide which one to walk home with. I begged my Dad to buy me Vogues from all the countries he traveled to so I could pour over each one. I studied each page of Phaidon’s “The fashion Book” trying to fit in every anecdote from every designer into my head, “How did they start out?” “What is their atheistic?” “What set them apart?” I bought fine art books to try and teach myself how to draw the models I saw in magazines, I learned to paint so I could learn how colors compliment each other; I made jewelry so I could understand how accessories pair with clothes. I put on my favorite Jazz vinyl at the end of the day and drew until my eyes couldn’t focus anymore. I learned Terri Hatcher gives the best fashion insider advice, to always listen to the stories and advice of successful designers, and that if my dreams were to come true, and my hard work to pay off, I needed a fashion education. I needed a mentor to tell me not just how to draw a pretty model, but a mentor to tell me how exactly to manage my career, how to work in retail, how to market myself more successfully and therein lies my need for an education from FIT.
Every designer has a fashion love story, ambition, and desire, but not everyone has the business savvy, and the education. With a degree in Merchandising, my gasps of breath will not only be reserved for Manolo Blahniks work, but for myself as well. For that day I can walk into a store, have my heart rate quicken, smell the perfume, and let a lone tear fill up in my eye as I step foot into my own store and finally say to myself “I told you you could do it.”