The Whole and the Parts

Clothing is a necessity. Fashion makes it a want.

How a garment comes to carry meaning beyond functionality. How it becomes a signal before you've said a word, a decision that says something about who you are or who you want to be. Behind that is a supply chain, a financing decision, a creative brief, a brand strategy - an entire architecture built to make a necessity feel like a desire. That is no small trick and I've never stopped being curious about how it's done.

Maybe that's why I'm drawn to it. Fashion is one of the few industries where the product is never just a product. It's a cultural signal, a commercial decision, and a creative act, all at once. The way I see it, those three forces - creativity, culture, and commerce (my 3Cs) - sit in a dynamic equilibrium. When they move in sync, momentum is acquired. When they don't, that's usually where the most interesting problems live.

I didn't come to this from nowhere. I grew up in a family that has been in the business of fashion for 102 years: RmKV Silks. That proximity gave me an early window into the phenomenon of how fibres get woven into culture, quite literally. I got to see the business side and the creative side - two important functions of a fashion brand. It's what spurred me to want to be a part of this industry. Not just to understand how it works, but to have a say in how it evolves. London College of Fashion seemed like the right place to start pulling the threads apart.

Fashion and design were not what I did in school. I was deep in science and mathematics, a completely different zone. It took time to settle into a new city and a new system. As Heraclitus put it, no man steps in the same river twice. But the questions I came in with are the same ones I’m still asking: how does the industry work as a whole and what is each part actually doing inside it?