LIFE AS A FASHION STUDENT IN NYC
After a crazy week, thirty-one year old, fashion student Ana Jablinski sits down to discuss a normal day in her life studying at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in New York City. Jablinski grew up in Curitiba, Brazil, about 5 hours by car from Sao Paulo, and completed her bachelor’s degree in fashion design at the Universidade Tuiuti do Paraná in 2012. “It’s not a fashion place at all,” she states. “If you wanna do something in fashion you have to leave the city. That’s why I was thinking ‘should I go to Sao Paulo? Should I go to Rio?’ or should I just try and live abroad?”
Jablinski is currently completing her masters in New York City and thoroughly enjoying the classes she is taking this term which are Craftology, Fashion Creation, Fashion Formulation and Design Communication. Along with those classes, she has been working on her thesis for the past two semesters and will begin working on her final collection in the following semester. Today, she learned about bobbin lace: a lace making technique made by braiding and twisting lengths of thread on bobbins according to The Craft Atlas) in her Craftology class. Jablinski describes her fashion class as “studying fashion history and how garments are conserved in museums.”
For the past week, Jablinski has been hand sewing a dress with couture techniques for a project that she has been working on since the beginning of the semester. The premise of the assignment is to focus on a subject that she loves and misses about life before the pandemic. She decided to combine her love for photography, seashells, and sculptures into one for the assignment. “Every single pin you see here is going to be handsewn. The process of making this garment, I would say, is about one week that I’ve been working on the garment and another week to finish”. Jablinski attempts to mix traditional garments and classic silhouettes with modern touches to reflect her feminine and romantic style.
Jablinski’s hand-sewn dress mentioned earlier is for one of her favorite classes (along with Cratology): Fashion Creation. “You basically deep dive into your creative universe and try to find yourself and your voice”. She describes this course as “more of a class to assimilate your creativity to. There’s no right or wrong”. Her fashion formulation class allows her the option to continue developing her assignments for her Fashion Creation class, while her Design Communication class teaches her how to use photography to communicate through images.
Her morning routine normally begins at 5 a.m. to start working on homework before class. Her study session at sunrise is followed by arriving to class at 10 a.m. and spending some time with her colleagues. "I try to be as productive as I can in class so I can use this time here in the studio, which sometimes is a little bit hard because I’m very social. I love talking to everybody”. After class, Jablinski spends her evenings at her internship with the successful fashion company threeASFOUR. After coming home from work around 8 or 9 p.m., she spends a couple of hours with her husband before heading to bed to prepare for the next day.
Jablinski began her internship with threeASFOUR only 3 weeks after school began by talking with threeASFOUR's Founder Gabriel Asfour. She notes that her weakest spot in fashion designing was pattern making because she has never been in an environment where she needed to make her clothes from scratch: “The patterns are basically hell for fashion designers because it’s so hard to make. You have to be precise and know what you’re doing. At the end of the day, clothes have to fit you right and people are not the same body. You have to be really precise”.
While Jablinksi has the opportunity to work under designers at threeASFOUR, some students could not see themselves pursuing a career in fashion afterward. College Sophomore Nicole Vindas attended FIT as a freshman in 2019 to study Fashion Business Management. Vindas decided to leave FIT stating “I decided that FIT wasn’t the place for me after a few months because I started doubting whether I saw myself pursuing fashion full-time as my job. I had always been interested in studying either law or political science as well”. Vindas currently attends Oregon State University with a major in political science.
In contrast to stereotypes of the fashion industry, Jablinski believes that it’s all about approaching businesses with respect. “For the past ten years I’ve been working in this industry, I have never crossed a person who is mean or not respectable...In fashion, there’s going to be a lot of people criticizing your work or copying {your work}. It’s a really hard industry but you just have to do what is right and respect other people".
When Jablinski moved to New York 8 months ago after spending time in Boston and San Francisco, she was fascinated with the energy and talents of her fellow New Yorkers. “When I moved here, for me it was a little bit of a shock because I knew that people in NYC think in more of a conceptual way. {Like} the idea matters more than the ability to make something. It was a transition I would say. I had to adapt and open my mind in a sense that I loved because I’ve seen the growth I’ve had”.
As Jablinski prepares to continue her day in the city and putting in additional hours on the dress to her left, she advises her future self to “Just keep working hard, you’re going to get there”. The Brazilian-born designer believes that loving what you do makes the tasks easier. Jablinski closes the interview by stating that quitting fashion has never occurred to her because she cannot see herself pursuing anything else.
Comments