Becoming a Conceptual Fashion Designer

When I look back now, I can see the whole road. Every step I took was leading here — I just didn’t know the destination had a name yet.

Around 2020, I was posting alternative cosplay and alternative fashion — taking the outfits I wore and modifying them, making them mine. But honestly? It goes back further than that. My whole life, I’ve wanted to be a fashion designer. The only problem was I didn’t know how to sew. So the dream sat there, waiting, while I collected ideas. And I have always had the ideas — more than I knew what to do with.

Here’s the thing people don’t know about me: almost every day I go out, somebody compliments what I’m wearing. Strangers stop me. That’s been happening for years. I was already dressing like a designer long before I had the tools to design.

Then two things collided: AI tools, and my art. My paintings were already textural — built up, dimensional, loud. And suddenly I had a way to take that texture, that maximalism, and put it on a body. The canvas became the fabric. The painting became the garment. And it clicked — this is what I’d been circling my entire life.

Now I can see it all playing out. Every cosplay post, every modified outfit, every compliment from a stranger, every textured canvas — it was all one road, and it led here: conceptual fashion designer.

And I feel it — this is a new chapter. I’m the most professional-minded I’ve ever been. For the first time, I have a clear plan: what I’m looking for, what I want to produce, across every medium I work in.

It will always start the same way. First, my imagination. Then, the canvas. And from there — it takes as many forms as I can dream up.

— Kellyann