The Hank and Hannah Choi Foundation
4th Scholarship Award
A Young Designer’s Way through Success
From a very early age, I’ve always dreamed of becoming a famous and successful fashion designer, to be compared with the likes of Doo-Ri Chung and Jimmy Choo. As I graduated high school and was accepted into Parsons The New School for Design, I was able to take a step closer to realizing my life’s ambition. Coming from humble roots, it was hard balancing schoolwork with several part-time jobs after school to save up for tuition costs. Between waitressing tables at a café and working the cash register at a gift shop, I had to constantly remind myself that much of the monotonous work I was doing was so that one day I could accomplish my dreams.
After receiving my diploma I was overcome with only temporary relief, knowing that the road ahead was long and filled with more obstacles that I would have to overcome. Fashion is an industry where success requires one to be patient, hard-working and extremely dedicated. To outsiders, it seems to be all glamour and glitz (who can blame them with the media and this generation’s obsession with designer brands and A-list parties). After a year of taking classes in Parsons, I began to get a better understanding of the inner workings of the fashion industry. Whereas most college students have to spend thousands of dollars, I had to make similar-sized sacrifices with buying materials and fabrics for my classes. However unlike other college students, my experience doesn’t change after college is over. Becoming a fashion designer is a career path that requires continued sacrifice and perseverance, a lesson that I am slowly getting a better grasp of. I am both apprehensive of the future, yet I have come to be able to appreciate the struggle and grind of making it big in a huge fashion-driven city like New York. Without the sacrifices my parents made (from giving up a well-established life in Korea to come to the US to taking a portion out of their income to help pay for my college education), I would not even be in the position I am today, and I am determined to make sure their sacrifices are not in vain. Success in New York City is arguably every fashionista’s dream come true, and I plan to make the most out of the next two years to network with prominent individuals in fashion, as well as establishing myself in the fashion industry one day.
Despite recent economic hardship which has caused people to drift away from the likes of high-end designer fashion, I try to remain hopeful for my own future, as well as others. I feel for the troubles of the many rejected designers, markers, graders, tailors, seamstresses, graphic designers, stylists, writers, enthusiasts, makeup artists, and photographers brought down by a garment scene in New York that has been struggling. Whenever discouraged though, I look towards the story of Doo-Ri Chung, another young Korean American woman who attended Parsons and went on to create a fashion empire. I know that if I ever were to achieve success like hers one day, I could not have done it without the help of my parents, friends, and classmates. My friends have always helped me, from when I struggled to learn English after moving to the US in sixth grade to encouraging me to strive for my goals today. The value of friendship and loyalty is worth much more to me to strive for my goals today. The value of friendship and loyalty is worth much more to me than material possessions and wealth, for how rich is a person who has wealth but ignores those that have paved the way along their road to riches? I am a person who is proud of her roots and where she came from.
Though I am aspiring to be a designer, I am a Korean first; I plan on being an active member of Korean-American organizations like the Korean-American Association of New Jersey (KAANJ) and churches around my area. Knowing firsthand the difficulties faced during this arduous process, I hope to help many other struggling designers and art students in the future by establishing similar scholarship and internship opportunities as the prominent designer I believe I will become.