Dear first year fashion student,

First Year Fashion School.

It was all a weird kind of trick that got pulled on you before you even knew it. Remember that flashy pamphlet? You know what I am talking about. The one that looked really glossy and awesome.

You had heard people talking about this school before. And then some uni promo ass gave you the official pamphlet.

The pamphlet has this chunk of photos that somehow resulted in a resounding SOLD from you. Those photos SOLD you. Oh yes. The photos of profs wearing I-am-a-design-prof-glasses leaning over peoples shoulders and proffing them and shit. The photos of that one awesome show with models walking and shit. The photos of that hooked up sweet ass studio that you were rarely designated to use after all, and shit.

ACCEPTANCE

You get this letter in the mail that says your good enough. You feel like you have arrived at life. You drop a mother load of cash on tuition, housing, new cell and comp, and of course the listed fashion kits and texts. You don’t care how much it costs. Because you, are fashion.

And then you got there and omg omg omg Orientation week. So best friends lets hang out k. Let’s go to, like, ‘the west side’. I heard it’s so amazing. We should like get an internship, together.

And then you go and after a 35 minute walk [because you don’t understand transit], after a 17 dollar lunch [because you don’t understand how to buy food in Toronto], and after at least 11 facebook ready photographs [because we look really local right now] you realize that you may not be cut from the same cloth.

I mean who the fuck goes to horse camp? At age 18? Not your people, is who.

HONEYMOONING

The building is a labyrinth of amazing. It never looked as good as it did on the first day. It may be unsafe mid fifties architecture with asbestos removal going on. But damn. In the beginning, its a bit of palace.

You wake up early, to gym early, to shower early, to look good early, to get dress hot early, to get to breakfast with everyone with all your overpriced tools early, to go to your design class early. This never ever happens after first year. Probably because you will become a disillusioned cynical lazy bitch, comme moi.

Anyways. Its the first day and you clearly did not get this memo.

There are leather tassles everywhere. Someone is wearing a satin top hat at 8 in the morning. All the loud heavy shoes pounding on the linoleum around are you are reminding you that you are clearly not fashion. And all these people are.

CLASSES COMMENCE

Its just the beginning so you are somehow just blind to everything that could be wrong with the facilities. They remain awesome and simultaneously frightening in your memory of first week. But shitty and frightening in reality ever after.

But its just beginning and you get homework! Which is incredibly time consuming, yet oh-so-embarrassing to explain to the rest of humanity residing in the real world. Oh yes. It the dawn of you having to explain and validate all kinds of bowshit to reality. Like that whole copying out the alphabet thing. That whole colour group gouache anal retentive mixing assignment thing. That sewing a man’s shirt sample for an exam grade thing.

All that shit is not useless per se. But it is the beginning of this itchy feeling when you know you are working hard. You know it’s hard for people living in the real world to respect completely. That’s fine.

But why do all these dumb assholes have to ruin it for you?

THE YEARNING TO VOTE BITCHES OFF THE ISLAND

These 19-25 year olds around you in this new class in this new place seem so content on ruining the name of fashion students everywhere. The question that haunts you is- why volume? It seems like a simple and reasonable question. You can somehow hear everything that a certain demographic ever has to say. You are trapped in a sea of assignments that necessitates you to be in the same room as these assholes for what seems like weeks.

It’s not just what they manage to say, but that you and everyone living in the real world around them is forced to listen. It’s this indescribable ability of the most stupid proponents of fashion school to project the most horribly ignorant and offensively uninspired conversations into the ears of the general public. You know what I am talking about.

Imagine a classroom of a school that you are meant to be proud of. And then imagine people in it saying things like...

‘When you dye fur, are the animals alive when you do it?’

‘If you chew it and don’t swallow it and spit it...is that bulimic?’

‘Why do all the poor coffee places have to be close?’

‘Who the fuck cares if there is asbestos in the ceiling. I fucking don’t.’

‘I’m going to be the next McQueen.’

If you only met the chick...trust me, the McQueen one cuts deepest.

These kind of people, broadcasting this kind of information, to and around each other in many forms of communication. And you are one of them.

It may take you a year to filter through this mass of falsies to find some intelligent friends.

OMG WE ALL REALIZE HOW NOT AWESOME THIS IS

You may actually try really hard with these assignments. Because you are under the impression that marks really matter. Whatever-the-case you get critiqued. But damn is it good to watch the lazy horse-camp-going bitches face of the first negative feedback of their cushioned lives.

The horse campers stop looking so preened. It never seemed like it could be possible. No top hats to be seen. No weighty shoes in studio. No foundation. Long timey no waxy. There is a haggard hair extension discarded in the trash. It’s like a wasteland, and you have no idea where all the hot fashion people went.

                                                                                           

The deadlines tighten. The tear ups in studio increase. The weekends seem shorter. The end is near.

THE END OF JUST THE BEGINNING

You have earned these little marks and grade point average things that appear on the screen of a computer. These allegedly quantify your abilities. These proceed to make some take themselves even more seriously than before. Conversely, a chunk of them drop out.

Everyone showers. Some crash diet. Bed/spray tan. Summer in the ‘burbs is within reach for the brats. The fine balance of the fashion school universe has been reclaimed and the asbestosy building retires for the summer. All that is required for a very anti-climactic ending to this blog.

The Try-hard Hipster

The Species of Fashion School

This episode is about the phylum of ‘Fashion Design’, and specifically falls into the genus of ‘Try-hard’ being of the species ‘Hipster’.

Fashion Design: Try-hard: Hipster

This person comes from the domain of a pretty condo with a security guard and pool, but aspires to live at an address in the scummiest part of town that borders of the periphery of the ‘indie-music scene’, and surrounded by second hand clothing stores that smell faintly of bed rot.

Characteristics:

 According to this specific form of Fashion Girl, all that is cool can be defined in aforementioned self indulgent blogs**. These said blogs list where to eat, where to meet, what to talk about, what is so ‘over’, what is fuckable, what is beautiful, what the trends are, where the best 6$ coffee is, and other pieces of information that fill up the uncreative and predictable brain of the Try-hard Hipster. These ‘rules’ are shared with the world under the false assumption that people care, and/or the false assumption that by merely diffusing this second hand mundane information -will by association- make the Try-Hard Hipster cool.

The Try Hard Hipsters favourite activity is talking about how wonderfully creative and edgy itself is. This is one of the most abbraisive aspects of the Try-hard Hipster because nothing that is created by this person will ever be a genuinely original idea or edgy. Any fashion items created will be heavily if not completely referenced by what the Try-hard hipster has been told what is cool, or ideas intentionally or unintentionally pilfered from other people. Any pilfered ideas will be reasserted to be of the Try-hard Hipster’s creation through continual self-indulgent cyclical conversation initiated and administrated by the Try-hard Hipster.

Social interaction:

Social interaction with the Try-hard Hipster involves the continual reassertion in conversation that in fact the Try-hard Hipster is cooler, more desirable, and most importantly more creative than yourself. The value of appearances supersedes the value of intelligence. For example, having a model friend is more valuable than having a funny or smart friend. To the Try-hard Hipster having people think that she hangs out with skinny people is imperative to survival amongst like species.

Mating Patterns:

Interestingly the mating patterns of this species are completely constant. Mating is desired (however not necessarily reciprocally desired by male subject) when the target male has the following characteristics.

• The subject male must be in a band or something equally assy that assy people talk about.
• Subject male must wear unwashed vintage garments, and have sweaty performances in them. Most preferential performances include being a vocalist as technical musical skill is secondary to being in the centre of the arty pictures that will be posted on low traffic self indulgent blogs.
• A requirement of the male to have is an interest in an area of art of design that is either obsolete and/or not conducive getting a real job.

How you may be superior:

You are a more socially aware, kinder, genuine, and most probably a more creative person.

How you are inferior:

In the eyes of the Try-hard Hipster you may never add up to a “cool” or valuable person, and you will continually be reminded of this during your social interaction.

**[please note: this blog is a form of self indulgent blogging. However, since there are no readers the level of self gratification is considerably hindered.]

What is Superior Inferiority?

Have you ever been in a environment where the laws of logic, and what society deems as humourous, ironic, and embarrassing do not apply?

This environment that I am asking you to think about could have been your first or current part time job, (regretfully) your full-time job, or current workplace, or schooling.

This place could be any environment in which you forced to live in a world in which what you would normally consider (as I stated earlier) humourous, ironic and embarrassing does not apply. In this backwards land what is funny, what is interesting, and what are valuable human traits are defined by the people that surround you.

There are people in the world who live trapped in what I call “Superior-Interiority”. They are overqualified entry-level-funny people working/living/studying in places or groups of people that just don’t understand life.

It could be a part time job as a cashier in a particularly bad supermarket where you get blanked by your fellow employees for trying to point out the humour in any situation, and in turn are forced to fake laugh at their repetitive catch-phrases, or when someone hurts themselves. In this case, its not that you have an infallible sense of humour that makes you superior. You are superior because in the greater scheme of things you are funnier. The sad fact though is that in the eyes of your redneck-hook-nosed-knocked-up-high- school-dropout managers eyes…you are less funny than her. To her you are inferior and humourless, but you are superior outside this backwards land.

This blog is about backwards land, and how it applies in many aspects of many peoples lives.

Fashion school is a zinger though. Imagine a class stuffed with the spoiled, the anime fixated, the militant vegan hipsters, the becky-home-eccy pearl wearing drops’o’sunshine. Many one of them think that they are the most talented person in that room. Many of them believe in the education they are receiving with unfaltering faith. Many of them believe they are better than the people that surround them.

Fashion school is the land of inferiority. It doesn’t matter how grounded, and real and genuine a person can try to be, you end up being inferior in the eyes of many of the people that surround you. You are absolutely superior, but indefinitely inferior.