This fashion portfolio was created during my summer at the Cornell University Summer Pre-college Program of Fashion Design. When I first entered the course, I felt completely out of place. Everyone around me seemed so confident and talented. I felt small, unsure of my abilities, and afraid of being left behind. I am not a fashion girl, or so I thought. My white friends dub me “forbid girl,” a serious science student who somehow wandered into fashion. We both laugh about it as I take it as a compliment. 

Well, plowed through every webpage of Vogue and WGSN with red eyes, reaffirmed every part of me as a “nerd”. Then my self-esteem and confidence heightened as I excelled at two courses in six weeks. This once-in-a-lifetime experience offers me everything I need to know to conquer the world, both at a scientific and a conceptual, aesthetic level. It helps me bridge the gap between two seemingly distinct worlds, one rational, one creative, once seen as hidden and completely unknown to each other. This hard-won realization reveals to me I likely have a talent, fueled by a fierce desire to prove to the world my worth and a love of humanity.

I didn’t realize it when I’d picked up a brush pen, spending two months in France as a child. I didn’t realize that the hard work I’d put into preserving and polishing my skills was not a waste of time. It could one day lead to a carefully curated portfolio based on my own experience, appraised and recognized by my tutor and peers. Charting my metamorphosis from a neuroscience enthusiast into a newly bred designer using cloth as a medium for intellectual rebellion, this portfolio, you see, is my quiet rebellion. The label "nerd," then, a stereotype implying an inherent divide between logic and aesthetics, became the catalyst for my collection. In the trend report, I introduced the “Cloverpunk” I created as a sartorial haven for fashion outsiders like myself, inspired by the traditional Irish symbol of clover, and reinvented it into an art form of quiet subversion against the uniformity that stifles creativity in modernity. The fifteen sketches are the preliminary outfits I created for “nerd” people like me, striking a balance between cute and appropriate. My mood board is a constellation torn from the dark. These are not random fragments, but stolen moments of resonance. It is a texture echoing resilience, a hue pulled from twilight introspection, and a line that maps the tremor of unspoken kinship. In 3D illustrations and collection boards, I dissect form not to deconstruct, but to reweave. I picture the outfits in simple lines, forming clear silhouettes. The specific illustrations show fashion is not just a pop-up idea; it has standardized boundaries and scientific precision. Lastly, I used a lens to collect the light that was otherwise leaking through the world’s cracks. Each photo is my way to preserve the magic in this world, my second pair of eyes to capture the beauty against the wicked, and my inner self’s eagerness to connect with the outside world. There is courage, despair, pain, hope, and the true me all in one.

This portfolio is my manifesto, a declaration that deep thought and profound feeling are not opposites, but companions, and that true innovation occurs at the intersection of seemingly disparate worlds. Fashion design isn’t just about fashion, about how beautiful it looks, but also about what it wants to say, and change.