I CAN’T GIVE NAMES

Once upon a time, there were designers.

 

 

Young, beautiful and hopeful.
Dress well, not following the trend, but, it’s only smoke in the eyes of people unaware of fashion.

God blesses them!

When I believed I was a designer, I was too old to be enchanted by the false promises of designers more famous than me.
Because, first, “my mother wanted” me to learn at the University of Humanistic Studies. And then, in spite of them, “the designer, the real ones”, when I finished IED, the European Institute of Design -IED-, nobody was interested in a 29-year-old girl trained with a beautiful cultural background and no one, not even, the “Milano da bere” would have overwhelmed her, in fact, now I am here, moved only by the passion that I have never lost.

Passion is the only thing, because, We, designers, losers and little nerds (it’s not like the Devil wears Prada life, but hours and hours on Photoshop to give us back pain) we believe in what we do. Really.
Tough, we meet despicable people, cold office, old computers, and someone who claims to be a designer and wants to teach us a job, We want to learn it. Please teach me!

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I stay here fourteen hours a day to show you how I am good with Illustrator,and “You” don’t care of it, because your budget has been reduced, and you prefer to sell your soul at Milan parties, rather than investing in wonderful, and I repeat, hopeful, fashion students.
Look Out! They, those who come out of that constellation of fashion schools, are really good! they believe in it, they stop eating and waxing, to go all out and in the end, arrive you… not photocopies and coffee, but only running an errand by feet under the rain, and if the next day, designers come into the office at 9,15 am with bronchitis, pneumonia, oh my Godness, I’m dying, What a palaver for you!
I spend 4 hours drawing ribbons on a sweater, because I learned drawing, doing a good job, and not being approximate. and you tell me that I waste time, it’s not necessary put ribbons on drawings, workers know doing it!

…Indeed, nobody says that you are able to go to Mars and came back with graphic programs.

It’s worthless, they told us. Never mind. Once in a while we will buy that coat Prada. Suck it up! Because the internship is not always paid. It doesn’t mean reimbursement, lunch, metro-season ticket, we know the live in Milan is cheap… especially if our parents sell a kidney to realize their children’s dream! But it’s okay, we go along with the requests of an experienced designer, who wakes up one morning and decides that the twenty-year-old phenomenon is no longer needed, so, bye bye, if you need six months of internship to graduate from the master’s course, it doesn’t matter. Stay at home “Young and useless free resource”.

We’ll wait for a new internship, another one, over and over again. We get stronger, we start from scratch, we will learn a little more next time, but on the human soul and the wonderful life of emerging designers… maybe.
And… I mean, I don’t like to put labels on it, but, for you, Alessandro Enriquez, some other time.

A name it’s not enough, and little luck, to be a designer, and, that’s what matters, a great man.

Written by Benedetta S.