Creating Happiness

Do you have a moment?

I want to show you a photo. Admittedly it isn't a very awe-inspiring photo. It's not something you would use as, say, your phone’s wallpaper, or an Instagram post to boost your engagement.

It's just a pair of worn fabric scissors with chipped red handles.

They're not special in any particular way. They haven't been passed from generation to generation down the family tree; they didn't belong to someone famous; and they're not limited edition. What they are is sharp, well cared for and instrumental in the moment my life took a hard swerve.

In an effort to avoid getting bogged down in details, let’s make what could be a long introduction short and sweet. I come from an academically inclined family full of very intelligent people - people who have thrown themselves into medicine, business and teaching degrees with fortitude I do not possess.

To quote Albert Einstein:

“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

I am a Fish.

So, the struggle to find any joy in the uphill trudge that was my education was all too real. I got through high school with passing grades: a surprise really, since the effort left me shivering in a corner like a chihuahua. After graduating I landed in a computer science degree - a degree that left me in debt to the government and utterly miserable.

Here's where the scissors come in.

Prior to my ill-advised launch into higher education, my mother had pointed out that there was a trade school near the university campus I would be attending. They advertised a 'Fashion Design & Textile' course, with a focus on industry-standard pattern making and garment construction. While you only had to do a year to walk away with a Certificate IV, three years would net you an Advanced Diploma.

This, I consoled myself at the time, was almost a degree.

Complete hodgepodge, that! As though three years of any kind of education is somehow better or worse depending on the slip of paper they hand you at the end of it.

But I remember that thought quite clearly, which is strange, because so many of those days slip through my fingers when I try to recall them.

For example, I don't remember applying for the Fashion Design & Textile course. I don't remember what spurred me to drop out of university or what it was that finally motivated me to pick the trade school. What I do remember is rattling my way up to the top floor of the campus building in an elevator that I think might have been older than the building itself.

I know that's impossible, but trust me, if you saw the elevator you would agree.

I remember following a fresh-faced group of newbies out of that elevator and into a small fabric store that lived tucked away in the corner near the third-year classrooms. There we were presented with the bill for our equipment. Once paid for, they handed us a bag full of bobbins, rulers, fabric chalk and...

My new, red-handled scissors.

My classmates and I guarded our scissors fiercely. We were told that they were precious and instructed to know where they were at all times. I think this was because most of our tutors realised that the broke students in their classrooms couldn't afford to replace them, but it stuck with me.

Just like the scissors did.

The building we Fashion students worked out of was four storeys high, with the lower two levels dedicated to...well, some other field of study. I don't recall what the people entering and exiting those two bottom floors were doing with their time, but whatever it was served as a startling juxtaposition to the top two floors of our shared space.

Where the bottom floors were grey walled and standard in their classrooms, the top two were a wonderland of colour and peculiarities. Classrooms were filled with sewing machines and mannequins. Huge, long tables ran the centre of the widened rooms - tables that somehow still managed to feel cramped as we gathered around them to offer advice to another student struggling with a bias seam or dart placement. Every time you stepped out of that horror movie-style elevator onto our floor there was some new garment or project on display in the foyer.

These are the things I remember.

Sitting at an industrial sewing machine for the first time and being intimidated as all hell, since I had no idea how to even thread the damn thing. Then learning how to straight seam, French seam, move darts and turn 2D drawings into 3D garments; being taught how to grade patterns, to distinguish between different fabric types depending on how they felt and what happened when you set them alight.

Yes, you read that right. Our tutors told us that if we were ever unsure, set a small piece of the fabric on fire and see what happens. I do not recommend this method of deduction. Aside from being dangerous, it usually smells terrible.

To say I enjoyed those three years of study would be an understatement. I relished it with a passion I had never known in my life before. I fell in love with the challenge of creation and the sheer expanse of creative possibility that was eased out of us by excitable tutors and eager classmates.

In the spirit of honesty here I should note that while I had found a whole new creative world, that didn't mean I, and by extension my designs, fit perfectly into it.

I will never forget my final range being graded by a disinterested tutor, her gaze sweeping my work with slow, lazy neutrality. After a long pause, one that I think was meant to be dramatic, she gave a dismissive wave of her hand and declared that my designs looked better on the hanger than they ever would on a runway.

A polite way of saying I was not 'haute couture' material, something that I think my trade school was hoping for and did not find in me.

Honestly, I didn't mind that so much.

My passion came from construction, not from dramatic design. I loved creating details that could only be known to the wearer of my garments - hidden pockets and seam lines that met in perfect mitred corners, vests that could be worn inside out, and strapless dresses that fit so damn well they didn't need to be tugged up every five minutes.

There is nothing, nothing, quite like a well-tailored garment. At least in my opinion.

Regardless of my lack of je ne sais quoi, I graduated. To this day my Advanced Diploma is one of the most precious pieces of paper on my wall. So, you would think that after finishing my studies, it would be a good idea to meander into the industry that my education pertained to.

Well, you would be both right, and incredibly, horribly wrong.

I did spend some time out there in the fashion world. I will be polite and say only that it was an experience. I worked for a few designers and saw behind the scenes of Fashion Week. I spent several years making custom wedding dresses and seasonal wardrobes for a small company that was comfortably situated in a fancy part of town.

I learned many things, but none of it was fun the way my studies had been. There was no freedom in what I created, and everything I made was in some way dictated by the trends, the clients’ requirements, my bosses’ vision.

Marc Anthony was credited with saying:

“If you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life.”

Well, no offence to Mark Anthony, but in my personal experience that is complete and utter twaddle. Setting aside the reality that not all of us have particularly marketable passions that are translatable into actual income, I have learned that if you do what you love every day, for a pay check dictated by the general public, you run the risk of rendering it no longer lovable.

This may not be true for everyone. Plenty of people make the creative or academic love of their life into a sustainable and enjoyable career. Perhaps I was not clever enough, driven enough or talented enough. But for me, taking a creative aspect of myself and attempting to monetise it, forcing it to conform to what was traditionally wanted within the industry, killed all the passion.

Burnout is real. It's hard. It hurts.

So, I got an administration job that I liked well enough, that paid an actual living wage, and my passion for sewing and creating became a hobby.

Best decision I ever made.

Around this time, somewhere amongst the burnout and guilt of spending so much money on an education I was no longer using, I realised that my brain had taken on a few weird habits. I would watch a movie or play a video game and see a costume that sparked something in my soul. As the costume moved about on the screen, my curious little mind would start in on the puzzle of how to make a real-life version of it.

Dresses from Disney films were the worst perpetrators for me. If you look closely at a Disney princess dress, you may notice that most of them have no obvious way of putting the dress on. There are no real seams and they certainly don't adhere to the laws of fabric or physics.

But suddenly they seemed like a challenge.

Could I do it, I wondered. Could I make something that looks like it does in the film?

The answer and the opportunity came, funnily enough, with a child's birthday. One of my friends had a daughter who was absolutely obsessed with the Disney smash hit, Frozen. This particular daughter was fast approaching her Frozen-themed birthday.

Was it possible, asked my friend one night after a few too many drinks and a lot of frivolous conversation, for me to make an Elsa gown? Better yet, could I become Elsa? Just for a few hours, just for the fun of it, just because his daughter would lose her mind if Elsa came to her party.

The challenge had been thrown down, the date of the party set. The excitement I felt was almost indistinguishable from full-blown anxiety because really, what had I agreed to? Could I balance my perfectionist tendencies and strictly cookie cutter industry skills with a movie dress made of literal ice magic?

After hundreds of hours of testing, trialling, crying, stirring motivational speeches in the mirror and of course my trusty red handled scissors, the answer was -

Yes.

Yes, I could.

It was as surprise to me, a surprise because I had never truly thought myself a capable person. If you recall, I refer to myself as a Fish.

I had always compared myself to those who were directly around me and found myself to be lacking. For the first time, I had done something that made me proud. Not only that, I was enjoying the act of creation again.

My motivation and inspiration were suddenly driven by 'Can I do it?'

Because if I could create a Disney gown, what else could I accomplish?

The pure challenge of these new, beautiful things was like a salve to the drudgery of my day to day. I pushed myself, tumbling like Alice down the rabbit hole, towards an ever-retreating horizon of possibility.

I had discovered a new subcategory to my hobby - Cosplay, costuming - a thriving community that I had always been aware of but never really a part of. Through this new outlet I learned so much so quickly, things that I would never have been pushed to learn if I had stayed in the mainstream fashion world.

For example, did you know that should you ever need to make yourself a cowboy's gun belt, fully equipped with holster and knife, there is an alternative to very expensive leather? Take a suede pleather and stain it with a leather dye, leave it to dry overnight before gently rubbing it down with sandpaper. If you've picked the right base fabric it will scratch up to look just like sun-bleached leather.

Now the next problem, because fabric and leather have different weights and movements. You simply add a layer of plastic, like the stuff people cover their tables and couches with. Glue your fabric to the plastic, fold over and stitch down your edges, leave it to dry and voila …

Leather without the price tag.

While I realise that not many people will find themselves in a position where information like this is useful, if even one person stumbles onto my explanation and extrapolates it into something beautiful, then I count that as a win.

And even if they don't, I got to be a cowboy for a day.

What more could a girl ask for?

I learned I could build props. I could make bags. I could refurbish tired shoes and give them new life. I could remake dresses from different eras using only my Fish brain and instructions from long-forgotten drafting books relegated to the dusty shelves of online catalogues.

I could do all of this without the pressure of a deadline, or a client’s requirements. And yes, teaching yourself new skills is expensive and ripe with failures that strip away motivation. There were weeks where I couldn't stand the sight of my red-handled scissors.

But there were also months where they were all I could think about. Where life was given purpose by the next stitch, the next idea, the next eureka! moment when something I was struggling with clicked together.

When the driving question ‘Can I do it?’ was once again answered with a resounding, uplifting: ‘Yes!’

All of this - the inspiration, the funnelling of my creativity, a decision I can't remember making, an elevator that I'm surprised no one has died in, and a dramatic deviation from my expected path – led to the discovery that being a Fish isn't a bad thing so long as you're asked to swim instead of climb.

And it all sparks in my memory when I pick up those red-handled scissors.

They have been with me on so many adventures.

And with any luck, they will be with me for the grandest adventures still yet to come.