Runway Season Survival

This was a hard season for me as a patternmaker. The design aesthetic developed at a pace pretty challenging to keep up with, since we squeezed the development of an entire full show season into only a couple weeks of preparation. We struggled to remain in control of our mostly dresses and soft woven line as more and more emphasis was placed on hard woven garments.

That said, this season has been viewed as a success by critics, and I really feel it has been a personal success, as well.

Here are some garments that I worked on:

 These are just the ones I made and I enjoyed watching them walk down the Runway. There were plenty more which didn't make the final cut that I was really excited about making, too. I always feel a teeny tiny bit melancholy when I only have a couple pieces walking, but what can I do? Hopefully, I can continue to grow, learn more, and become more useful overall. I have the heart, I'm just waiting for the talent to develop more fully. Until then, though, I'll take pride in the accumulation of all my hard work, even if my labor only bears a small amount of fruit.
xo

Training

To give a clear idea of how much of one's personal life is lost in preparation for fashion week (if you're on a Runway Team), in two weeks, I will be turning 30. I have not planned a party - there is simply no point. I don't have the time or energy to plan one and I wouldn't enjoy it even if someone else planned it because I'd be yawning and coming down off a whole week of 12 hour daily anxiety highs. I'll be expected to be here on Saturdays. I will be expected to be here late every night. I will lose my sense of self for a month and a half.

And then it will be over.

It sounds horrible, and it can feel pretty low, at times. The thing is, I am one of a whole team of people who sincerely love what we do. We are perfectionists. We understand that when we push ourselves beyond the mental boundaries we've set for ourselves, that we can truly create art. It's not easy, or it wouldn't be impressive enough to send down a runway,  catch the attention of top publications, and to be reviewed and promoted by them, as well. You are only as good as your last season, so if you aren't unique and artistic, you aren't relevant. That requires a lot of creativity, time, and energy of many people. I'm just one of them.

My goal is, when the show has run, to throw myself a belated birthday party. At that point I can revel and be the Birthday Girl. It's fine, it's not great, but it is fine. How many other people can hang onto their twenties for an extra month?!


Anyway, at a meeting recently, I warned my whole team that I will not be available the Sunday before the show because that is the date of my marathon that I've been training for. Someone turned to me skeptically and asked how I've had time to train for a marathon when I've literally starved a couple times because I did not have time to go grocery shopping mid-week. The stores all closed before I had left work.

I explained that during the summer months, I'd woken up at 6:00, and ran 3 miles everyday before work. Unfortunately I had to discontinue that practice during the winter months because it is too dark at that time, making it unsafe time for a woman to go jogging in an urban environment. Instead, I wake up early on Saturday and run seven miles. Then, on Sunday, I have an hour long spin class, afterwards I cross train for an hour, and then I have an hour of yoga. On Tuesdays, I cross train for 2+ hours, and on Thursdays I swim laps for an hour. My gym is open 24 hours, so I go immediately after work on those days.

I guess I hadn't really understood how much effort I was putting into my health. Hearing myself say it out loud and looking at it now, I am proud of myself. Not only have I kept up with something important to me, created a rigorous lifestyle so gradually that I hadn't even noticed how much I'd adapted to it, and am in great physical health despite many set backs in recent years, but I have created a boundary where work was not allowed to impede. Despite the job I love being so demanding that I'm postponing celebrating my Birthday, I still have the ability to keep work in its place, something I'd feared not being able to do in the past.

To top it off, I have no resolutions that I can think of. Except maybe to teach myself French. And brush up on my math skillz on the Khan Class. Just because I'm 30 and never use Algebra is no reason to forget it. Also, I should really write more. I guess there's always room for resolutions...