What makes you a perfect candidate for FIT?
Why are you interested in the major you are applying to?
I will always remember the first fashion show that left me knowing fashion was my future. I had always used fashion as an escape from my reality and as a way to express myself without words, but before then had never truly considered a career in the industry. My desire to devote my life to the industry only grew as I aged. My first dream career was to be a designer, so I could make the beautiful clothing I had spent hours looking at, and then it shifted to journalism, so I could verbally express the beauty of design to the world. I was unable to fund the big dreams I have, so I decided to attend Community College to give myself time to save money and grow as an individual before transferring to the fashion school of my choice. My fashion dreams came crashing down on me the summer after high school graduation, right before I was to attend my first year in college. I learned that the fashion industry is not the utopian industry I had created in my head, but in fact an industry full of unethical and environmentally devastating practices.
That knowledge felt like a blow to my life, how could I go into a field that causes pain to our planet and its inhabitants? I was stuck, as much as I wanted to go into fashion, I couldn't do it and still consider myself an environmentally conscious individual. My solution required finding an alternative, and that alternative is sustainable fashion. Sustainable fashion allows me to still live out my fashion dream without compromising my dedication to our planet. Not only is it an alternative, it is the future. I want to be a part of creating a new industry, one that values its impact on our planet just as much as profit. The classes and opportunities FIT provides in not only fashion but sustainable innovation would empower me to be a part of creating the change I hope to see, which is why I wish to grow nowhere else.
My time at PCC the last year and a half has been spent expanding my knowledge and experiences in Environmental Studies by starting an Environmental Justice Club, being a District Student Sustainability Council student leader, and working in the Environmental Center. I have spent my time focusing on the Environmental Studies side of Sustainable Fashion by volunteering in the learning garden and Habitat Restoration Team, diving deep into permaculture principles and ecological science. I have become apart of a family at PCC that strives to make our small campus and local community a better home for everyone and everything. My focus has never drifted from business with fashion in mind, and while PCC unfortunately does not offer fashion related courses, I have taken business courses that apply to my business degree and would apply to a Fashion Business Management major at FIT. This major would give me the opportunity to implement my sustainability knowledge in a business setting, through sustainable design and manufacturing processes. While my desire to be a designer has dimmed, being able to work alongside one from the preliminary creative processes to the selling of our creations is exactly what I see myself doing. I want to be the one that spots upcoming trends and brings them to life in an environmentally conscious way. I want sustainable fashion to be the norm for everyone, and see it all around instead of having to search for it like I did. I want to be apart of that process, and more importantly be the one that strives to make it the least impactful as possible. My newer passions may have diverged from a fashion focus, but attending FIT would allow me to reconverge them with sustainable fashion. Not only reconverge them, but make them stronger because my array of passions has only driven my desire to pursue fashion as a career.
I have created a home for myself at Portland Community College, but my final destination has always been FIT. It's time for me to leave the comfortable home I have created for myself at PCC, for a chance to flourish at FIT.
**This is not nearly close to being finished, but my current problem areas that I encourage others to focus on are: deepening the intimacy/expanding my personal experiences to make myself and essay unique, and relatability-not everyone understands an unexplainable internal desire to do environmental work but I want to somehow help the reader relate.
