I am often asked by people who are familiar with me or not if it was a whim that I moved to the United States to study fashion design, but it was not. The only thing is that in China, people like me who do not have any talent in painting, how dare they want to enter a high threshold school like the Academy of Fine Arts or the Academy of Craft Arts to study design? If after graduating from college, or even after working, when I have a certain age, I would change my major to one that is not related to me, it would be like a fool’s dream. But in New York, perhaps the line between art and practice is not as clear as it is for us, so there is no harm in dreaming about it.
When I first applied to the New York Fashion Institute of Technology, I was not accepted. The reason I was not accepted was that my drawing skills were too poor, but what I didn’t say was that I didn’t realize it until later in my career, and I’m afraid I was too ignorant. The requirement for the fashion design program that year was to submit a piece of design inspired by a fruit. I went to the fruit store and finally found a pineapple. I didn’t know what inspiration was at that time, but I just looked at the pineapple every day and had some ideas. But I had an idea, but I couldn’t paint it, it was just a pineapple. The night I received the rejection letter, I ran to the Hudson River and was sad for a long time, feeling that my “American dream” was shattered. I was advised by someone who had studied in the U.S. that this was not a problem, and that it was perfectly normal in the U.S. If you really like it, you don’t have to do it. If you really like it, you don’t have to seek formal admission, just take classes at the school. The great designer Tom Ford went to Parsons School of Design in New York City, registered in the “interior architecture” major, only to find himself obsessed with fashion after three years, the last year of all the classes were fashion design, and later became a fashion master, right? So I got my head in the clouds and registered for two classes: one in three-dimensional tailoring and one in sewing.
The sewing teacher was Seggio, a good-looking, chubby, semi-professional housewife. We had about 30 students in that class, most of whom were “amateurs” like me, but she never slowed down. Sewing was not difficult for Chinese girls, as we had all more or less stepped on our mother’s Pigeon sewing machine since we were children. It was just that the class was on an electric industrial machine, much faster than the pedal machines we had used, and it often took a while to get used to the “whoosh” of a foot to the head. Even so, our hands were much more flexible than the average American girl who had never touched a sewing machine before, especially the black girls in the class. I got an “A ” on almost all of my assignments. I didn’t really know what the practical use of taking this class would be in the future, but I found it interesting to follow Ms. Seggio as she worked on all kinds of different beautiful stitches and made a garment in a very professional way.
One day in class, Seggio asked me why I didn’t do a degree while she was fixing my machine. When I told her the reason, she immediately got angry: “This industry needs more than just painting talent, and it’s very wrong for the school to do that.” The admissions process for the next semester was nearing its end, and she didn’t say anything more, just told me to hurry up and submit a new application.
A week after I sent in my application, I received an acceptance letter.
Now, more than a decade later, I still think about Seggio often. I went to the school’s website the other day and found out that she was only an adjunct assistant professor until now.