I recently had the opportunity to be the keynote speaker at Creative Mornings RDU for the theme "THREADS" - A huge honor an an amazing opportunity to share my unique experiences. Here's a short synopsis of my talk, which will be available soon through the Creative Mornings website.
Art as Legacy
I’m going to start my story in the most boring place you could ever think of - The Hungarian Immigration Office in Budapest. The year was 2014, and every morning I would take this cute little tram through the city to the end of the line. Then I would get on a not-so-cute bus and go a couple of stops, where I’d be dropped off on a nondescript, gray street. I would walk a couple of blocks and then stand in line at a gray building along with Hungarian lawyers and people from all different countries, just so I could present my case to stay in the country. The funny thing was, I didn’t even know why I wanted to stay in Hungary so badly. Yes, I had a Hungarian boyfriend, but there was something else I was looking for there… I just didn’t know what it was. I spent my days wandering around the city, popping into various museums, coffee shops, market halls, and churches. And then one day when I was at the Hungarian Folk Art Museum, it hit me. It was while I was looking at a collection of traditional Hungarian costumes - the intricate hand-tatted lace - the fur hats and cotton caps - the hand-stitched leather boots - that I got the first glimpse of what my story as a creative actually needed to be. The clothes were beautifully detailed, and they were all made for unique individuals. I could tell because the mannequins were all different shapes and sizes. Each costume was from a different part of the country, and each piece was made by many different people, all with unique skills. One outfit may have been worked on by five or fifty or one hundred artisans. These clothes, I realized, were instrumental in telling the story of that culture. They held stories of family traditions, dances, lifestyles, and passed-down skills.
I knew I had been lost creatively, dangling in the present with no strings to connect me to the past or to the future. And it was then that I realized - the story I wanted to tell with my life and my art was one of my own culture and my own family history… And I had to start telling my story right away.
I first learned to sew from my mom. My mom learned to sew from my grandma. My grandma learned to sew from my great grandma. Funnily enough, fashion was in our family. My great grandma was an accomplished knitter and sewer. My grandma owned a yarn shop, so she was something of an entrepreneur. This was rare during that time period. She was a skilled needlepointer, and you couldn’t sit down in her house without sitting on something that she had needlepointed by hand! My mom would never profess to be a creative (she’s an accountant by trade), but she made the most intricate little smocked dresses for me when I was a baby. I began sewing simple things as a child - quilts and doll clothes. Together, my mom and I made dresses for school dances and sweet little tops. I learned to crochet and then to knit. Fiber art and sewing was a small part of my life at the time, but I began to weave my identity from my creative beginnings. At the Savannah College of Art and Design, I had trouble choosing a major… I knew that fashion was a precarious career, but I had already learned the basics of sewing and designing. So after much deliberation, that’s what I settled on. I moved forward with a career working as a designer. It felt like such a glamorous profession! But I soon understood the reality of fashion design to be far different from my hopes. I got a job designing for Abercrombie and Fitch right out of college, but I felt so creatively stifled. I spent most of my days filling out spreadsheets with codes for materials, and picking thread colors. I even had to print out life-sized cutouts of styles I had designed. I'd crinkle them up to make them look like real fabric and then I'd show them to our CEO for him to pick at. My job was weird and it was boring, but I didn't think too much else of my career choice until the Rana Plaza factory collapse in 2013. Thousands of garment industry workers died due to unsafe working conditions, and for me it was a big wake-up call. That was the moment where I said - enough. I couldn’t be associated with this level of pain and suffering in my career. I began to feel quite lost. I had spent my life up until that point working towards being a successful fashion designer, and I was about to throw it away. I decided to start traveling, and I ended up buying a one-way ticket to Budapest.
Budapest was where I began to feel that pressure lift off of me, and where I started to see that I could still create clothing in a way that was freeing instead of ensnaring. After I spent those months searching for meaning, I began to piece back together my story. And seeing those Hungarian costumes at the Folk Museum cemented my feeling that my heritage is a big part of my story - The women in my family are creatives and makers. On my maternal side, they all made whole cloth out of threads in one way or another. So I began to do the same, buying a couple of ramshackle sewing machines and making t-shirts out of my little flat in the city. And if you're wondering, I did get that visa! I got a self-employment visa on the condition that I start my own business. Being creative again was fun - I learned how to screenprint, and I drew intricate designs that I printed onto tees - But the best part about owning a business was meeting my first customers… They were from all over the world, and it was so rewarding to see people choose to purchase clothing that I had made with my own hands.
After spending three years in Budapest, I was ready to return home. I had broken up with my Hungarian boyfriend and felt that there was nothing left to tie me to that city, however much I loved it. I returned to Raleigh in 2014 and I put all of my energy into growing my brand that I called “Pamut”. Living in Budapest taught me a lot, but maybe one of the biggest thing it taught me is that your legacy as a creative is worth preserving. As creative people, we have a special job in society. Our job is to illustrate life as we know it - our hopes, dreams, fears - so that people today AND people in the future can better understand what this exact moment in history meant. You never know who you will inspire, what you will teach people. You LITERALLY never know what the sands of time will uncover for those people in the future. It could be your art. Think about what art has told us about the past, our understanding of lost cultures and civilizations.
Art is a record. This is my legacy. Pamut means “cotton” in Hungarian, and chose the name because I wanted to make all of my clothing out of natural fibers (which I love for their drape and longevity). It was important that Pamut clothing was timeless, and also that we focused on quality. I also began to understand the importance of tailor-made clothing. I added plus sizing when I realized that many of my plus size friends couldn’t easily find clothing that fit well. Since we made all Pamut clothing to order, we evolved into doing a lot of custom sizing. This is how clothing was made up until very recently and how I saw the costumes displayed at the Hungarian Folk Art Museum - Individual garments were made for a specific purpose and for a specific person. I wanted to get back to that way of making clothing. I have come to realize that my goal through Pamut is to continue building a legacy - It’s a family legacy for me, but it’s also a story that I want to tell the future (my daughter for sure, but also people in the future in general) about garment making in North Carolina. I have a one year old daughter, and she’s going to grow up seeing her mama create clothing for people of all shapes and sizes. That will create a great impression on her, whether she wants to follow this path or not. She’ll know that her grandma and her great grandma and her great great grandma all made beautiful clothing. So, what will your legacy be to the people who are important to you and to the people who experience your art? What story do you want to tell for the future?
Image courtesy of Andrew Bentley Photography.
