THE CKD ROSE

I’d arrived at FIT in New York City with a nearly delusional conviction, but no noticeable skills in textile design.

While everyone else had some actual training or an adequate artistic background, I had no clue what I was doing.

Mixing watercolors was a mystery. Creating shade completely new. Detailing depth so far out of my league.

“Fuck! What am I even doing here?” I’d ask myself, staring at the page, staring at the other students, staring into myself.

“Am I crazy!? Is this insane?”

But then I’d take a breather and go stare down Bleeker or Canal or Houston, into the eyes of the east coast beast that invented never taking no for an answer, and I’d know my eyes were aligned, that my vision wasn’t mistaken, that I was meant to do this.

So, I stayed, throwing newspapers on the floor of my Greenwich Village shoebox and practicing my fingers blue every minute of the weekend that I wasn’t waitressing, interning, blogging, designing or studying. I asked nine million questions in class, “What’s a markup? What kind of paper do you use? How do you sell this? Who can I work for?” I’d quiet the insecure chaos in my chest standing in the weaving room or grazing my fingers over fabric, drinking in these elements as if from a well, as if they knew what I couldn't see yet.

As the months passed, the vacancy of practical experience became a strength, oering space for my own style to exercise its limbs.

Towards the end of the year, one of our last projects was to paint a rose.
“If you can paint the rose, you can do anything in this industry,” our professor mentioned, passing out ________.

Paint this and you’ll have the keys to the city, basically.

All I remember thinking is, “This is it. I need to learn how to do this.”

While everyone else painted realistically, I went left field, o the grid, deep end with it.

I went my own way.

At first, it was shit. Total garbage.

But I kept practicing.

Outside, taxis honked, people partied, coee poured, and I’d be inside with my head bent over the page day after day.

In the end, I don’t know how I drew it, where it had been stored in my spirit this whole time or even why it wanted to be that shade of blue, but it arrived as an instant icon permanently drawn into the CKD collection.

“It’s a Rose” marked the beginning, and I saw it.
It stared back at me just like the city had, and told me I wasn’t here to create out of conformity,

but to imagine out of my soul.