The Best Advice I Ever Got

I made what I believe to be the most fortuitous acquaintance of my life three months ago. In order to explain how it happened, I will need to shed light on one of my more controversial philosophies. I don't know who plops ideas into our minds but even as a high school student, I have firmly believed in quitting.

One of my prior blog posts waxed poetics about my struggles acclimating to LA. I revealed the ways in which I did not respect the fashion atmosphere here and my failed attempts at maintaining a part time job (even in the service industry). What I didn't mention was my firm belief in quitting.

If you learn this path will not lead you there, then quit of course darling.

Quitting is a form of PERSISTENCE.

This is not the best advice I ever got but I'm getting there. After more than one year of painful learning experiences working in the fashion industry in LA, and I mean getting fired/let go/amicably parted ways with multiple times, absolutely ego crushing and soul shattering moments one after the next- I picked myself up to carry on and then suddenly I met Ali.

She called me back for an interview and I was frightened and excited by the tone of her voice. Finally someone on this side of the Earth who understood: fashion and beauty as the most important things that we know of on Earth. I was driving when I took her call, she asked me where, I said the International Silks and Woolens House, she said it's fabulous there but that I should go to Fabric & Fabric, I wrote it down. She invited me to her studio then, I arrived 30 minutes early and lurked around the entrance gripping my resume and a copy of the latest ID magazine. She saw me and invited me in, I was suddenly amazed that a place like this could be real.

The brick walls were painted white, the antique desk was wooden with white paint chipping. We talked for two hours and even though I couldn't even do anything much for her- I'm not a pattern maker by trade nor can I make tech-packs or speak Chinese, she hired me. She told me about how she had been fired as a waitress, without me even telling her that I had too. I melted into the basking warmth of acceptance. Which for me is not a sensation frequently felt.

I arrive to work for Ali every other day, early. When the pattern maker leaves at 5:00 I can't wait to turn the overhead lights off, the lanterns on and I always linger a bit at the end of my day an hour later to admire our special place on the Earth. I have never worked in such close proximity to the designer herself before, and I am learning so much about how to improve Stickybaby, how to make it more real.

Oh, so you probably want to hear the best advice I ever got? Towards the end of the day on halloween, I vented to her that I did not want to attend a party I'd been invited to that evening. She told me: you go and you make a fool of yourself. So I went and I did and I felt invincible. I realized then that I had been carrying so much weight believing other people thought about me, even at all. When really they weren't, it set me free. 

So if you're wondering if you should go that party, you go and you make a fool of yourself. And if you want to quit, quit. But if you want to give up on your search for your own special place on Earth, I'm sorry, you cannot. You pick yourself up and keep attacking every gruesome day, until you meet your Ali.