I'm a Stanford master's student who has spent five years engaging with fashion from all angles: making clothes, starting a company, working inside a luxury conglomerate, and thinking hard about why any of it matters.

My mother has always been my biggest creative influence. As a first-generation Korean immigrant, she often made things for our family out of necessity and instinct. She sewed our curtains, reupholstered furniture, and some years made my Halloween costumes by hand. Growing up around that creative energy instilled in me the belief that I could give life to any idea, so long as I put my mind to it.

As a child, that manifested in making sock monkeys and stuffed animals. As I grew interested in fashion, it became clothes.

What keeps me in fashion is its proximity to culture. It's something everyone engages with every day, whether consciously or not. It signals identity, belonging, aspiration, and how we distinguish ourselves from those around us. Clothing is also deeply embedded in history. Denim started as workwear for miners and became a symbol of rebellion, then youth, then heritage over the course of a century. I'm endlessly drawn to the way objects collect meaning as they move through different people, places, and moments in time.