Down The Rabbit Hole: A dive into art, fashion, and the in-between
by Patricia Broniola
Art and Fashion has always been mentioned hand in hand for as long as I can remember, like Tweedledee and Tweedledum from Wonderland. I believe one cannot exist without the other. This wasn’t always the case for me, my love for fashion was more of a silly daydream rather than something I can call mine.
But have you ever felt like there was something more in store for you out there?
Growing up, a fashion education was never in the cards for me. Being raised in a traditional set- up, I was supposed to want to be a doctor or an engineer but I felt like it wasn’t enough. I think everything changed when I had the opportunity to study fashion one summer in 2014. It was like going down a rabbit hole of sewing jargon and a flurry of fabrics.
I used to dream about what it would be like to be in that world. At a very young age I guess I already knew that I wanted to be in fashion. While it may seem superficial to some, there are kids like me who live and breathe art and fashion everyday. I think that this is what kept me going throughout high school and the uncertainty of my future; because five years from that one summer, I was given a scholarship to study Fashion Design and Merchandising for college. Each day was another opportunity to learn something new. But the journey towards my dream also has its ups and downs, like seeing signs pointing in a hundred different directions at the same time. To be honest, I still feel like Alice most of the time. There was a line in the book where she says, “I wonder which way I ought to go.” A question I’ve probably asked myself a thousand times before.
Sometimes I still can’t believe I finished my thesis collection already. Working on the same project for months at a time and actually finishing it is no small feat. You pour your heart and soul into this tangible thing that people can see, feel, and hopefully appreciate when the time comes is a little bit scary. But I’ll push through it and imagine that this is Alice finally defeating The Queen of Hearts.
I can’t thank the people that believed in me enough especially when I was doubting myself. My own version of the Cheshire Cat, White Rabbit, and Mad Hatter. A curious bunch if I would say so myself but somehow we clicked. Maybe it was because we were all going through the motions as well, our very own Wonderland.
At twenty-three years old, sometimes I still feel like that same little kid who fell down that rabbit hole. Still curious to learn about the world and everything in it. While Wonderland feels so much bigger now, The Queen of Hearts doesn’t scare me as much as before (but you can’t tell her that). And sometimes I don’t get lost even with a hundred different directions in front of me.
So it doesn’t come as a surprise that graduation feels like it could come anytime even if it’s still months away. But after that, who knows? Maybe there’s another world I have yet to explore.
