Growing up Asian with Fashion

Growing up, I have always been interested in fashion, from wanting to model to wanting to be a designer, to now wanting to market and merchandise. There have been several steps on my journey to where I am now.

Growing up, there were many pressures to follow the American Dream. Follow the path to a successful career through good grades, discipline, and a well-paying career (medical, law, engineering, computer science). However, there was rarely room for business or art because, in Asian American culture, there was no guarantee of success in those careers.

In the beginning, truly, I had lied to my parents, to my family, that I wanted to purely study marketing. I had already felt guilty that I no longer wanted to pursue a career in the medical field, and I had even achieved a certification in Biomedical Sciences in high school. My family wanted at least one person to pursue the medical path, and they wanted that person to be me. I worked. I kept myself working towards that goal, but then the pandemic happened. As part of a clique, I went on a journey of self-discovery and realized that medicine was not for me.

I began searching around, first I found marketing and business, then I found fashion merchandising. As a sophomore in high school, I had decided to make a pivot. Even though I was enrolled in the Biomedical program at my high school, I could still choose different electives. First, I went with the principals of Business & Marketing. My Junior year, I had a lot of fun. I thought about other career choices, accounting, finance, and economics; however, fashion merchandising still lingered in my mind. I was evolving my own style and figuring out what I truly wanted.