The Next Chapter: Beyond Graduation

Being in the early 20s is all about figuring out life. We all certainly know that in this age, how stressful and demanding it would be to figure out life ahead of us; who am I, what do I want to be, what should i do, are questions that i constantly ask myself every single day. Especially now that I am already in the final year of my degree, having 8 more months ahead of me until graduation, the question I ask now is what’s next? As much as, yes it’s 8 more months / 46 weeks / 323 days still. But for me at least, the answer to what’s next is not something trivial to deal with, it’s quite critical and needs time to make sure and prepare. 

After studying fashion designing for 2 years+ now, I can say I totally grasp the life of being a fashion designer; the prospects, the directions. If anyone would ask me, did I make the right decision 2 years ago to come into fashion? Now I could answer with a definitive answer of “YES. I don’t regret it.” Although there’s some doubts in the beginning, now I kind of understand why things work out the way they are. I may not say for sure what the end of this direction will be,  but all I know is I am in the right industry and there’s more to this that I anticipate for.  

Lately, I’ve realized how much the world is gonna change and how big of a shift is going to affect our industry and that all involves innovation. We can feel, or at least now we see the proof that technology has been more involved in our lives than ever, and the future of fashion won’t be the same already. Adding in with the sustainable efforts the industry is working towards, we can clearly see where this all is going. This means that the conventional fashion industry that we all know of, won’t be the same ever again. 

I am grateful that I entered the industry in this coming time of change. I’m lucky enough to be educated to see problems within the industry and this means having to look for answers that will lead to change ahead and what this means is; OPPORTUNITIES. Rather than being scared, I am actually very thrilled and wanted to be part of this future part of change. 

After studying the basics technical and creative part of designing and production of garment making, what’s next would be into the core of garment innovation; textiles (sustainable textiles/tech-incorporated textiles). This means going deep into the base of garment production, the raw materials. 

Why is this relevant to me professionally as a designer is because, for the past year we’ve been demanded to “think” of the entire life cycle of a garment FIRST before actually designing. Looking deep into where and how of the problem solving and this all and this changes the entire process of designing already. Most of these sustainability problems lie on the material itself or not the production method. But it’s always a problem to find solutions within unsustainable materials, as a designer particularly, there’s not much we can do as this all lies in the fabric manufacturing etc, at most we designers only has 2 options; 1 is to utilize “waste”, which is a very generic topic but I feel in the future we need more than just using “waste”. The 2nd option is to buy and use sustainable materials; Tencel and many others. There’s already a few options on sustainable materials, but the problem now is, it's not easily sourced, or it's widely available and hard to find in the Asia market at least. Globally, the Western market is already largely dominated by sustainable innovations, but locally, the Asian market is always left behind. Sustainability has been a long topic since years ago on the other side of the world, but somehow in Asia, people are still not that made “aware of”, not as much as the Western market at least. The sustainable market in Asia has not been fully developed and it's just a matter of time that we will catch up. 

Why is this relevant to me personally is because I'm always up to innovative dynamic problem-solving things. In the past 2 years of studying I realized that I love designing, but what I love more and what I’m stronger at is research and development. I love finding problems to solve and finding various alternatives to it. I feel at least for me personally, it's more worthwhile, impactful and meaningful if I can serve solutions to wider audiences in the industry itself rather than serving customers buying clothes. Although some might say, why do you want to make life so difficult? It’s easier to just produce and sell “clothes” to customers like the typical “Asian” mindset. But for me, if I have to do this for the rest of my life, shouldn’t I do something more meaningful? Because personally for me, that is life, something worth exploring and finding solutions for. 

Through this future fashion innovation direction not only this could impact fashion brands, sustainable brands; designers but also the whole industry. If I were to do textiles, not only I could be a designer but also at the forefront of the supply chain, responsible for producing my own textiles to the garments I design. I think, and I'm pretty sure this future fashion innovation will all be about sustainability and I wish to help solve the problems the industry has, providing more and widely sourceable materials and innovations. Whether it’ll be tech incorporated or biologically innovated, there’s endless possibilities in fashion as the industry can work with any interdisciplinaries. 

How do I do it? The skills required for this direction is definitely to have a deep understanding of the field. This might mean, physically means studying more; courses, masters, (research more on which particular field this is going into, which exact course?) or get into the “industry-inner circle” like the sustainable or future fashion innovators, or go down to sites to see and dig deep. A lot of analytical and research skills will be needed and this mentally means never giving up because the road is still long ahead of me. It’s about having a good mindset on this and that the fear of failure might be there, as I said, the market is still not fully developed here, I need to have faith in this, and trust the process. I should be more adventurous and active. A lot of factors can affect this goal; financially not there to fund, mentally felt it's too tough and too long of a road, maybe in the middle tired and just wanted to find an easy way out and settle down. 

The future is unknown. As much as I love to venture out on the unknown and the possibilities it might come with, it might not all be rainbows. The unknown is like walking down a long endless hazy road, and the 2 utmost important thing I need to hold on to is faith and guts. If one of these is lost, then it’s a hard road to walk.