The Architects’ Daughter
The last thing I wanted to be growing up was an architect. I spent many afternoons playing with binder clips and carpet samples under the desks of my parent’s offices, regarding the profession as too long and too boring. Hours and hours of sitting at a desk, laboring over designs that appeared so analytical in my child-self brain. I resented architecture, not understanding my parent’s interest in this seemingly mundane career. But as I’ve grown up and found my own passion, I can’t help but notice all the connections that fashion and art have to the world I grew up in, and how my past informs my perception of the world today.
Both of my parents were architects. They worked for different firms, therefore giving my brother and I double the exposure to the day-to-day of somebody who worked in this field. As kids we didn’t quite understand the extent of what they were doing. Whether we had to spend the afternoon in our dad’s office or our mom’s, we always came to the same conclusion: this is boring. I vowed to myself that I would never work in a 9-5 office environment, and I became absolutely determined to find a job in a creative field. What I hadn’t realized yet was that what they were doing was creative. Sure, there’s a lot of technical aspects to creating a building from nothing. But my parents made sure to show us aspects of their craft that weren't just meetings, emails, and blueprints. They would drag my brother and I to famous buildings and significant houses in Washington D.C. and New York, effectively raising us in an environment where architecture was an integral part of our lives. As children we begrudgingly went, complaining the whole time of our disinterest in our parent’s passion. As an adult, I’m finding more and more connections to my passion for fashion and art history, to the career I promised myself I would never be involved with.
History through a fashion lens is inherently interwoven with history through a lens of architecture. Both crafts mirror each other through different art movements, with fashion affecting architecture and vice versa. What I realized through my studies was that clothing was simply the architecture of the body. Where humans construct and adorn their homes with specific silhouettes and details, we also participate in a similar practice on a much smaller scale every time we get dressed. The lines and curves of a garment mimic the construction of buildings, except instead of stone and brick the materials are fabric and thread. I can’t help but notice the intersection between how architecture, art, and fashion connect in representation of cultural taste and human history. When I realized this connection, it clicked in my head why my parents worked so tirelessly on perfecting each detail of their projects. They were fashion designers, but for buildings.
By rewriting my understanding of their work in a way that I understand, it dawned on me that I was closer to the architecture world than I would have ever expected. I thought by majoring in something seemingly so different, seemingly so much more creative, I would have distanced myself from the profession which was the only one I’d ever known in my family. I wanted to do something different and new, instead finding myself in an adjacent career. The way I feel about architecture now is a deep appreciation for and particular interest in the subject as it pertains to fashion history. I’ve become very prideful of my first hand experience growing up in an environment which fostered my overall perception of the world, keen to find connections between the two art forms.
I’m grateful for the experiences my parents gave me as a child, as I feel as though it gives me a unique insight to history that others might not have a personal connection to. As I begin my career in a curatorial role at a museum, I know I will bring this added context to my understanding of the pieces I’m working with. I’ve become passionate not only about my interest in fashion, but the concept that garments and buildings are constructed and designed in such a similar fashion. This scale of both may be drastically different, but the way they intertwine and reflect humanity will continue to be how I consider and contextualize the world around me.
