Since buying that first jumpsuit in 2016, I continued to search for more interesting, alternative men's clothes, but with little success: other than another jumpsuit I purchased that didn't even fit me quite correctly, the options were severely limited or not exactly to my taste.
Spurred by that frustration with conventional retailers, I set my sights on starting a new craft: constructing my own clothes. During high school and more so college, I had been casually interested in fashion design, intermittently sketching ideas—for womenswear or menswear—that appeared in my brain. In recent years, I found myself producing dozens of more detailed drawings and renderings, solidifying a new well of imagination I hadn't thought existed—and with my dissatisfaction with corporate, gendered dress codes came a desire to act more tangibly on that creativity.
As a more serious gauge of my interest and dexterity, I enrolled in a short introductory course in the fall of 2016 at the Fashion Institute of Technology, in which I made a pair of pajama pants. Since I didn't own the right equipment yet, that class was my first and only attempt at sewing during that year, and I didn't seriously reconsider trying the activity until, in the summer of 2017, I happened to walk by an abandoned sewing machine on a sidewalk in my neighborhood of Brooklyn. I was so thrilled I didn't have to worry about buying my own first machine—though it still took a few more months of getting over mental humps and a firm New Year's resolution for me to finally bring the machine out of my closet and try making things.
And make things I did: since the start of 2018, I've created a coattail-inspired T-shirt and a ruffled-shoulder T-shirt; I've also turned a pair of khaki pants into shorts with a belted tie and altered that ill-fitting jumpsuit by adding some contrasting fabric at the top. I have been very proud of myself for not only conceiving and bringing to life my own personal designs but for also undertaking the responsibility of grasping new techniques mostly by myself. Since taking that FIT class, I knew I wanted to do any future work on my own time, in the interest of not being restricted by assignments dictated by instructors or acquired patterns. With this newfound skill, I might as well invent something totally unique; otherwise, why would I make it myself? Granted, ample time and effort is needed to construct a garment, and my craftsmanship is nowhere near perfect—but I am merely delighted to be able to physically produce ideas that I don't see anywhere else.
Apart from purely wanting to look differently, I found a renewed sense of purpose in life thanks to my emerging hobby. My time throughout most of 2016 and 2017 was spent majorly on my job, some close friends, cooking, and watching too much television; through sewing, I now feel that my time is being invested in something much more worthwhile, productive, and progressive, with regards to both my personal happiness and the world's general perceptions.