RIDE

Ups and downs of my fashion journey

Link a la versión en español

I have been working in this industry for more than 17 years. In that time, some amazing things have happened and some pretty shitty ones too. I’ve spent most of this week with a single thought in my head, what to write about. I have some good stories in the fridge, but couldn’t focus on any of them seriously. Similar versions of this state of flux have been happening last week and the week before. Writing is a bit like that for me, but today it just occurred to me that the reason might be that for a while already I have conflicting thoughts about fashion, or more accurately, about my life in it. I have to let them out before I can’t write anything else anymore.

I did not originally set out to become a stylist, when I was really young I wanted to be a writer. I loved creating characters who had a hard time, giving them complicated, absurd, or ridiculous situations to deal with. I had no trouble having my poor characters go through stupid and painful things, and now shudder at my lack of compassion. I think I couldn’t empathise because I was young and had little experience of life. I didn’t know yet that living is less like a love affair and more like a divorce negotiation. 

One day

I couldn’t write a single line, another one went by, and then another and another. Strange as it sounds, I remember visualizing words disintegrating in front of my eyes and hard as I tried I couldn't grasp them, I was blocked. It was terrifying because by then an outline for my personality had already been created in which the role of WRITER was essential, and telling stories was my way of life. How was I going to live if I couldn't write? Long story short, I ended up in London, in search of some meaning at the tender age of 21. I found my first job in retail in a luxury shoe store next to the now closed Old Bond Street site of London College of Fashion and randomly, someone told me I should become a stylist. I thought I might give it a go and applied. Miraculously - considering my absolute lack of fashion knowledge- I was accepted and fashion became a new life for me.

I had found a career that valued creativity, craftsmanship, and most importantly: storytelling. I thought -If I can’t write stories, at least I can tell them through images-. I fell in love head over heels with fashion and along the way found my chosen family within the ranks of this industry, all beautiful and immensely creative people who inspire and push me to be better every day. But this doesn’t mean that I was happy ever after.

At the time I had no contacts, no previous knowledge of the field and a very impractical view of fashion. Nevertheless, I am very stubborn and have been fairly lucky my whole life, so I ended up learning the craft, understanding that fashion is not an art, it’s an applied art (a massive difference) albeit with some incredibly creative and poetic moments, and most importantly, a business. For most of my career, although I understood well the business side of brands, I failed to see the business side of what I did, I didn't make strategic decisions or treat my relationships as networking. Getting way more emotionally involved in the rumble of things than I should have for my own well-being.

Last month when my students asked me which had been the biggest challenge and the most important lessons in my career, I told them some of them in absolute honesty, but I did not tell them that the biggest challenge had been learning to separate my identity and my sense of value from my job. I guess because I’m still at it. And I guess that’s why my subconscious mind fears that if I don’t talk about fashion, maybe I won’t have anything else to offer. Even if my conscious one knows that’s absolute rubbish.

A few years ago I was offered the most incredible opportunity in a longer project, it was a wardrobe role, but not in fashion. I took it because it was massive and I was by that time already burnt from working tirelessly but feeling that I was getting very little results regarding the goals I had set for myself. I wanted to try something else and maybe breathe a little, get some distance. This ended up being one of the most horrific work experiences in my life, I was bullied and felt completely incompetent and lost. In hindsight, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because that experience made me understand that I had to focus on the stuff I deeply cared about, which was putting my bit into creating a better, more responsible and caring fashion industry towards its workers and society. I finally dared to start a podcast, a media project I had been dreaming about for a long while already, which made me immensely happy, but that eventually had to be paused due to funding and time issues. Afterwards, I got a role covering a maternity leave at a company that I loved and later transferred to a dream job in another country which turned out to be another nightmare job, so I came back home to Madrid. In the three years these experiences lasted plus the pandemic I, of course, lost many of the clients I had (I’d been a freelancer for most of my career). To make matters worse, because I was unemployed or freelancing, whenever I applied for jobs that I had the profile for, but I wasn't even interviewed. A long time ensued of very little work. 

Not having work puts you in the position of reviewing all you’ve done, it made me grateful for an assistant job, when before I would have felt miserable, it made me value the incredible opportunities I’d been given, even if at the time I didn’t make the best of them in many cases, and it confronted me with all the ideas about myself and aspirations that were suffocating me. I realised that while assisting (and I had a lot of this, because when top stylists and editors came to Spain, they wanted to hire a bilingual stylist to help them out) For most of my career, I had constantly dimmed my light, not because I felt I had to, but because I thought that’s what good assistants do, destroying any possibility of joy along the way. I had often felt frustrated at the challenges I was faced with, instead of treating them as the normal downsides of being a fully functioning adult in a normal job and most importantly, I realised that much as fashion had been essential for me, I had chosen life, my personal relationships and mental health as my priorities instead and hadn’t been aware of that. My sense of humour, ego and self-love are now in a much better place. But because of all these ups and downs I sometimes have a bit of impostor syndrome. I have never before felt such a thing, I had my tantrums but never thought that I wasn’t good enough. I am now rediscovering my value from a truer and humbler space. 

One of the downsides of it is that I don’t care as much as I did about fashion anymore, which is kind of healthy. I still do love it, and of course still feel passionately that things should be done better and that there are amazing creatives out there that deserve being celebrated (or criticized), but I wonder if I am alienating you or myself by putting it at the centre of the conversation. I often wonder too if it makes any sense adding up to the noise, if what I have to say needs to be said at all. 

I have come full circle, to write about fashion but mostly about life, this time I hope that with a bit more sense and compassion. The other day someone asked me how to keep your style when dealing with clients. I didn’t really have an answer then, because the old beliefs still kick in and I didn’t want to tell them things that I’m not sure are true anymore, but I think I have one now. As a stylist and as a person, you never lose your style, because that’s the stuff you’re made of, the way you see the world. Clients, though, don’t necessarily value that, they value how easy you make the job seem, how much of a smile you have on your face and how you solve the problem without a huff and puff. I didn’t know that for most of my career and believed that my styling abilities were needed, which of course were, but I should have let myself be lighter and know that who you are can’t be achieved or attained, you already have it and that’s what people value.

Thanks for reading, misfits. Next week hopefully will be on a lighter note :). I read you in the comments. Please like and share as you see fit.

Love,

Patty