 |
 |
Vol X1V Number 36
| Designing her future Rebecca Carr Just like the countless times previously, 19-year-old Ashley Phillips emerged from the limousine blinking against the glare of a hundred camera flashes exploding in her face. As the throngs of spectators jockeyed for position to get a better look and shouted excitedly in Italian, a waiting bodyguard quickly and expertly whisked her through the crowd to where designer Georgio Armani and a few dozen supermodels waited up on stage. Spotting Phillips, Armani casually waved her over to his side. It wasn't her first trip to Milan, Italy, nor was it her first brush with world-renowned fashion designers. But what made this trip the adventure of a lifetime for the 2004 Kamiak graduate is how this one ended: No school bell signaling the end of third period, no alarm clock heralding the start of a new day. This time it was real. Italy. Armani. Supermodels. Fine dining and top of the line designer clothes. The stuff of Phillips' dream world - both day and night - had just come to life brighter and more vibrant than she'd ever imagined. “I have dreamed of this since I was 8 years old,” she said. “I've always been fascinated with clothes, fashion, and if there was one person on earth I could meet, that person has always been Georgio Armani.” Phillips had just returned from a family vacation when she flipped through a Marie Claire magazine and saw an ad for a contest in which the winner would fly to Milan, meet Armani, and rub elbows with supermodels. The entry requirement - a 150 word essay explaining why they should choose her - sounded too easy, too good to be true. And as any writer knows, it was - just not how Phillips had imagined. “How do you get all your thoughts into just 150 words?” she asked laughing. After cutting, slicing, dicing and countless critiques by friends, Phillips realized that a picture does paint a thousand words - so she painted her entry on a large poster, incorporating her four main points (passion, freedom, inspiration, destiny) into a design that also included her middle name, Rose, as a centerpiece. “I wanted them to get a feel for how badly I wanted this,” she said. Next came the weeks of torment that follow any important submission: The thoughts of self doubt battling for position with the bursts of confidence, that sinking feeling when the hear-back deadline passed, and finally - FINALLY - the destiny call arrived announcing she was headed for Milan. “I'd just decided to move back home and not pursue business school,” she said. “I knew I really wanted to be a fashion designer, but I hadn't a clue how to break into the field.” Before she knew it, Phillips was on a 12-hour flight to Milan, where Marie Claire staff had arranged five-star hotel accommodations. “It was mind-blowing,” she said, “The guy at the airport holding the little sign with my name on it, the concierges all knew my name and were expecting me.” When she found the personal letter from her idol Armani waiting in her room, all she could do was jump up and down. “I was so excited!” she said. “I know it sounds cliché, but it's exactly what happened.” It was a whirlwind trip indeed, as Phillips could barely grasp what was happening. Before taking her front row seat at the live runway fashion show, Armani himself gave her a beauty lesson, she got a first hand look at his spring line up months before its release, and best of all, a $1,000 shopping allowance at Emporio Armani. “I felt just like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman,” Phillips wrote in her essay for the March, 2006 edition of Marie Claire. Back home now, Phillips is seriously pursuing her design career, putting together a portfolio to apply to art schools in New York. She now knows her reservations about her previous career path were trying to send her an important message - one that the Marie Claire staff and Armani himself taught her just by example. “There are people in the world doing what I want to do,” she said. “Why not push myself to be one of them?” |
||
|
||
|
