I Have Given Up on My Dream of Becoming a Fashion Designer

One day when I was a college student.

I was reading the magazine "So-en" and suddenly thought, "Alright, I'll become a fashion designer."

Looking at the magazine, I used a pen I had on hand to flip my own first and last name, and I got excited all by myself, thinking, "It's just like 'Yohji Yamamoto' or 'Rei Kawakubo'!"

It's a good trait of mine that I take action immediately, following the sayings "strike while the iron is hot" and "there is no time like the present."

On the first day, I thought, "Okay, I'll do it," and researched how to become one. On the second day, I requested a brochure for Bunka Fashion College. On the third day, I bought back issues of "So-en," and by the fourth day, my motivation had completely vanished.

The reason my motivation disappeared completely in three days was that I realized I had only admired the creativity of fashion designers, and I had absolutely no interest in clothes myself.

I didn't want to make clothes.
I hadn't even realized that.

No one knows about that three-day commotion, but just thinking back on it makes me feel embarrassed.

However, there was a discovery in it.

It is that I have become able to assert that someone who starts looking for a "school" because they want to "become something" will never be able to become that thing.

People who truly become fashion designers are already attaching frills to their own clothes before they even look for a school.

They are taking off all the buttons and replacing them with their favorite ones, or taking apart clothes with patterns they like and sewing them onto the linings.

When you truly want to do something, your hands are already moving on their own.

People who start looking for a "school" because they want to do something are hopeless, and furthermore, that mindset of thinking you can become creative just by going to a creative school is beyond help.

For example, people who want to become comedians enter a "training school," but that is only because the era of "becoming an apprentice to a comedian" is over, so they have no choice but to enter a training school; it doesn't mean you can become a comedian just because you entered one.

People who become comedians are already "comedians" before they enter school.

Similarly, people who become fashion designers are already "fashion designers" before they enter school.


In fields where you create something, there is first the impulse to create, and "school" exists to provide practical help, information, and leads to turn that into a job.

It is not the other way around.

Because "schools" want to secure many students, the worse the school is, the more they will entice you by saying, "If you join here, you'll find what you want to create," but someone who doesn't have an impulse before entering school will never have an impulse after entering.

Do not be deceived.

The impulse comes first. The "school" comes later.

There is no reverse.

First, if there is no impulse, nothing begins.

You can judge what you truly want to do by whether your hands and feet are already moving.