People have told me, “a portfolio of baking and fashion (styling)? That isn’t a really cohesive mix if you also include your sustainable fashion business proposal and menswear croquis.” It’s why, after half a year, since making the resolution I made over bubble tea to have a portfolio website up and running by Christmas, is still left uncompleted.

Being in Hong Kong now for about five months, has given me time to really mull over my own interests and I’ve realized after immersing myself in many spectacular blogs concerning fashion, that the portfolio I want as a designer is not the traditional artisanal ones that Renaissance apprentices would tote around to show to their fellow artists. Rather, what I really want is one that is a close synthesis between blog and portfolio. I like conversing with people thus writing and photography (of fashion/baking) is what I realize to be the best way of expressing me in the most comfortable, raw form. The reason why I opened two more blogs was to monitor my own sub conscious ways of making. I want to understand why I create the way I do, the underlying overall aesthetic that I deviate to (if you know me, I am constantly at a tug o’war between minimalism, 18th century frivolity- symmetry/geometry versus arabesque/script forms, colour versus absence of colour, feminine versus masculine). When I start to spot some pattern, I will go with it and hopefully create a distilled aesthetic that is inextricably me. I don’t want to make up an aesthetic because pretension is not the name of the game. If I try to invent something that is outside of what I already do, I am forfeiting the natural ways I am designing.

Within the confines of my cubicle and the absence of social groups, I’ve poured all my focus into being conscious of the unconscious. Now I am itching for a home to place all my work in. I think I will make it my goal for June. I already know what name I want for my site and it most definitely will not be my name alone. Someone told me, “if it’s your first site, you should use your name.” Except my name is nothing new nor has any personality in it.

While most designers want a portfolio to speak to potential clients and employers, I want a portfolio that just speaks to the masses. Perhaps you won’t hire me because I seem all over the place. Perhaps you wont’ hire me because my skill levels range from culinary to clothes to drawing to writing. But what I can’t do is deny these are my strengths and that even if they do not merge into one perfect package, I do them well. Perhaps all in their own individual domain, but nevertheless I am not just a fine artist. Not just a writer. Not just a fashion designer. But three in one.
I’ve been trying to fight being three in one but the thing is, why I am fighting at passions that have been so clear cut? In the end, I use all three to do one thing: create and communicate. I wear the clothes I wear to challenge the MK mold, I bake because I like to give and I write because it’s the easiest form for me to express core ideas and philosophy.

I just read a stunning article about Meryl Streep in Vanity Fair. I envy her ability to be so secure in who she is that is not defined by people. When she was young, people thought of her as unattractive but she thought to herself, "oh well, can't do anything about being less attractive." And she poured herself into acting- she didn't stumble on beauty road blocks. Rather she simply chose to not see it as something worth paying attention to. And she just moved on. Yet the industry is full of established beautiful people whom cannot seem to let go of this first to truly pull ahead and focus on their acting. It's why I love Meryl Streep and why she is, in my eyes, one of the only women in this industry whom I'd actually consider a talented actress. One who can play a myriad of characters because she first got over herself in order to become the person required on screen. The simplicity in such a realization is hard to actually fulfill.

Ok I'm on antibiotics. Die stomach flu die.