By Jussara Da Silva
There is something about fashion season that has always fascinated me beyond the clothes themselves. When Fashion Week begins, everything appears to happen almost instantly. The lights go down, the music begins, the first model steps onto the runway, and suddenly there it is: an entire world that seems to have appeared fully formed. We see the clothes, the casting, the set, the lighting, the beauty, the accessories, the atmosphere, the music, the way every look follows another until a complete idea has unfolded in front of us. Perhaps we see a Dior collection that transports us somewhere completely unexpected, or Chanel creates a world that makes us reconsider something familiar, or another designer presents one extraordinary look that stays in our minds long after the show has ended. We watch those ten or fifteen minutes and experience the result as though the result were the event. But Fashion Week does not begin when the first model walks onto the runway. By then, so much of the real work has already happened. Months before anyone takes their seat, someone was looking at references. Someone was sketching. Someone was sourcing fabric. Someone was developing a silhouette that perhaps failed completely the first time. There were conversations between creative directors and ateliers, fittings that revealed problems nobody had anticipated, garments that were taken apart and reconstructed, ideas that seemed brilliant on paper and somehow didn’t work once they existed physically, accessories that changed, colors that disappeared, looks that were removed completely, music discussions, casting decisions, set designs, invitations, lighting tests and hundreds of details that the audience will never know existed. By the time we call it “Fashion Week,” the people creating the collection have already been living inside that season for months. What looks like the beginning to us is, for them, almost the end.
I was thinking about this recently because I realized how differently we tend to approach our own lives. We often decide what we want the next season of our life to look like, but instead of beginning the work before that season arrives, we wait for the season itself to give us permission to start. We say, In 2027, I want to be healthier. By next summer, I want my hair to have grown. Next year, I want to dress differently. In September, I’m going to become more disciplined. When I move, I’ll create the routines I’ve always wanted. When I get the opportunity, I’ll finally prepare myself properly. When January comes, I’ll start becoming the person I want to be. There is something comforting about attaching change to a future date because dates feel like clean beginnings. January feels untouched. Monday feels organized. September feels like a new chapter. A birthday feels significant. A new season gives us the psychological feeling that the previous version of ourselves can be left behind and another one can begin. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. Rituals and beginnings can be incredibly powerful. But sometimes I think we misunderstand what a beginning actually is. If you want something to exist in 2027, January 1st does not necessarily need to be the day you begin creating it. Perhaps January is the runway. Perhaps August is already the atelier.
Imagine if a fashion house approached its collections the way many of us approach our goals. Imagine announcing an extraordinary Spring/Summer collection and then waiting until Fashion Week begins to start sketching it. The guests arrive. The photographers are outside. Editors are taking their seats. The lights are being tested. The music is ready. And backstage someone suddenly says, Okay, now let’s start designing the clothes. It sounds absurd because we understand instinctively that the visible moment can only exist because of an invisible period that came before it. Yet we repeatedly expect exactly this from ourselves. We arrive in January and announce that this is the year everything changes, and then we become frustrated by February because the results are not yet visible. We arrive at summer and wonder why we don’t have something we decided we wanted for summer but never actually began preparing for. We reach an opportunity and feel unprepared because we assumed preparation was something we would do after the opportunity arrived. We want the runway first and the atelier afterward. Then when transformation takes longer than we expected, we interpret the delay as failure rather than recognizing something much simpler: we started designing the collection on the day it was supposed to walk.
Take something as ordinary as deciding that you want your hair to be longer and healthier by 2027. It is such a simple example, but I think it reveals how strangely we sometimes think about time. You can say throughout 2026, I want my hair to look different next year, while doing absolutely nothing differently today. Then December arrives. Suddenly 2027 feels close enough to become real. You begin researching products, changing your routine, learning what works for your hair, taking better care of it, and then January arrives a few weeks later. Technically, you kept your promise: you started working toward the goal in 2027. But emotionally, you may already feel disappointed because you imagined 2027 as the year when you would have the result, not the year when you would finally begin creating it. And then February comes, March comes, and you start saying, Why is this taking so long? But perhaps the goal was never unrealistic. Perhaps your relationship with the timeline was. If you already knew in August what you hoped to experience next year, why did the calendar need to change before you were allowed to begin? The future does not suddenly become more available to us because midnight passes on December 31st. The future is usually built while it still looks like the present.
I think this is one of the most beautiful things Fashion Week can teach us because fashion understands seasons differently. The industry is always physically standing in one season while mentally preparing another. It can be summer outside while designers are thinking about winter. The public may still be wearing one collection while the house is already developing what comes after it. There is an acceptance that what will eventually appear cannot begin at the exact moment it is supposed to be seen. Creativity needs incubation. Construction needs time. Ideas need testing. And perhaps our lives need the same thing. We are so accustomed to measuring progress through visible outcomes that we forget there are entire periods of our lives whose purpose may simply be preparation. Not every month needs to contain a dramatic achievement. Not every week needs to produce something impressive enough to show someone else. There are seasons for researching. Seasons for practicing. Seasons for quietly saving money. Seasons for learning something badly before becoming good at it. Seasons for building routines that still feel awkward. Seasons for trying something, discovering that it doesn’t work, and going back to the beginning. These periods can feel frustrating because there is no applause attached to them. But Fashion Week reminds us that the atelier is not less important because the audience cannot see it.
Think about what happens behind the scenes of a collection. A designer can begin with an idea that never reaches the runway. A fabric can behave differently once it is cut. A dress can look extraordinary in a sketch and completely wrong during a fitting. An entire look can be finished and then removed days before the show because it no longer belongs to the story. None of those moments necessarily mean the collection failed. They are part of making the collection. Yet in our own lives, we often treat revision as evidence that something has gone wrong. We decide on a plan in January and feel guilty if it changes by August. We choose a direction and become embarrassed if we later realize it no longer fits. We set goals based on the person we were six months ago and then force ourselves to continue pursuing them because abandoning the original plan feels like admitting defeat. But what if we treated our lives more like an atelier? What if changing something after the fitting is not failure? What if discovering that an idea doesn’t work is useful information? What if something you thought belonged in your next season simply doesn’t anymore? A creative director is not required to send every sketch down the runway simply because it once seemed like a good idea. Neither are you.
This is why I don’t think “start now” should become another aggressive instruction about productivity. I don’t believe every hour needs to be optimized. I don’t believe we should spend August anxiously preparing for January until we forget to experience August. Life is not literally a fashion calendar, and one of the great differences is that life refuses to follow our schedules. Things happen that we could never have prepared for. Goals change. Circumstances change. People change. Sometimes the healthiest thing we can do is stop. Sometimes rest is preparation. Sometimes deciding that you no longer want the goal is growth rather than failure. The point is not that we should constantly be working toward some future version of ourselves. The point is that when there is something we genuinely know we want, we do not have to wait for an arbitrary date to begin moving toward it. We can enjoy today while still preparing something for tomorrow. Fashion houses do not stop existing in the present simply because they are designing a future season. They hold both realities at once. Perhaps we can too.
There is also something important about how invisible preparation usually is. When we watch a spectacular fashion show, we rarely think about fitting number seventeen. We don’t know about the seam that had to be opened again because something wasn’t sitting correctly. We don’t know about the sample that arrived and looked nothing like what the designer imagined. We don’t know which look was supposed to open the show three weeks earlier, which fabric became impossible to source, which accessory was redesigned at the last minute, which conversation completely changed the direction of the collection. We see the result and mistake the result for the process. We do this with people too. We see someone arrive somewhere and think they suddenly became successful. We see someone become confident and assume confidence appeared naturally. We see a person’s style become beautifully defined and forget the years of terrible outfits, experiments, mistakes and changing tastes that may have come before it. We see someone achieve something and compare their runway to our atelier. Then we wonder why our own life looks unfinished. Of course it looks unfinished. We are backstage.
Maybe there are periods in your life right now that don’t look particularly impressive. Maybe August isn’t producing some enormous visible transformation. Maybe you’re simply reading more. Maybe you’re learning something. Maybe you’re putting away a small amount of money every month. Maybe you’re trying to understand your wardrobe. Maybe you’re changing how you take care of yourself. Maybe you’re slowly improving at something nobody around you even knows you’re working on. Maybe you’re having conversations that are changing the way you think. Maybe you’re making mistakes privately. Maybe you are simply becoming clearer about what you don’t want. It is easy to dismiss these periods because they don’t photograph particularly well. There is no dramatic before and after. Nobody is applauding. But perhaps this is not the empty space before your life begins. Perhaps this is the atelier. Perhaps the things that feel small today are the fittings, sketches, fabric tests and quiet decisions of a season that hasn’t reached the runway yet.
And this is where I think we often underestimate consistency. A spectacular runway collection is made of thousands of tiny decisions that eventually become one visible statement. Life works similarly. We imagine transformation as one enormous decision: I’m changing my life. But most of the time the dramatic announcement matters far less than what happens afterward. You don’t build personal style the morning you decide you want personal style. You build it every time you notice what you actually enjoy wearing. You don’t become knowledgeable about fashion the day you decide to study it. You become knowledgeable through years of watching, reading, questioning and paying attention. You don’t build something meaningful because you felt extraordinarily motivated one afternoon. You build it through ordinary days when the work was far less exciting than the result you imagined. The runway can last fifteen minutes. The atelier takes months.
I think there is something freeing about understanding this because it changes how we interpret slow progress. If you are preparing a collection, you don’t expect the first sketch to look like the final garment. You expect development. Why, then, do we expect the first week of a new habit to look like the person who has practiced it for five years? Why do we expect the first attempt at something to contain the confidence of the hundredth? Why do we become discouraged when the life we’re building still has pins sticking out of it? There is supposed to be a period when things don’t fit perfectly yet. There is supposed to be a period when you’re figuring it out. There is supposed to be a period when only you can see what the final result might become. Not everything unfinished is failing. Some things are simply still being made.
Fashion also teaches us something else about anticipation. Part of what makes a show exciting is that there is a moment when the preparation has been done and the collection finally has to leave the atelier. The doors open. The audience arrives. At some point, you cannot keep altering the dress forever. It has to walk. I think life has that side too. “Preparation” can become another form of hiding if we are not careful. We can spend years telling ourselves we’re not ready yet. One more course. One more month. One more improvement. One more piece of information. One more rehearsal before we allow ourselves to be seen. But the purpose of backstage is not to remain backstage forever. Eventually there is a moment when you have to trust what you have built enough to step into the season you prepared for. The work beforehand gives us confidence, but it can never remove every uncertainty. No fashion house knows exactly how a collection will be received when the first look walks out. They prepare as much as they can, and then eventually they let it be seen. We may need to learn that balance too: begin before you’re required to, but don’t prepare forever.
Perhaps this is why I find the idea of seasons so comforting. Fashion never expects one collection to contain everything a designer will ever have to say. A collection can be extraordinary and the next one completely different. One can receive enormous praise and another can be misunderstood. An idea can disappear for several seasons and return years later in another form. There is always another collection. Another opportunity to refine. Another possibility. Yet we often approach years of our lives as though each one is a final examination of our worth. By twenty-five I should have this. By thirty I should be there. By the end of this year I should have become that person. We place enormous pressure on one season to contain the entire story. But perhaps 2027 does not need to be the definitive collection of who you are. It can simply be another season. Some things will work. Some will need alterations. Some ideas you are certain about today may never make it onto the runway. Others you haven’t even imagined yet may become the most important part of the collection. You are allowed another season.
And perhaps that is the thought I want to carry with me as this year continues. We are already far enough into 2026 that 2027 no longer feels like some distant abstract idea, and this is often the point when people begin thinking about what they wanted from this year, what happened, what didn’t, and what they want next. There can be a temptation to wait. Wait until autumn. Wait until December. Wait until January. Wait until everyone starts talking about resolutions and new beginnings again. But if there is something you already know you want for the season ahead, perhaps you don’t need to wait for the lights to go down. You can begin quietly. You don’t need an announcement. You don’t need a perfect plan. You don’t need to transform everything overnight. You can make the first sketch. You can find the fabric. You can try the first fitting. You can discover what doesn’t work while there is still time to change it. Start in the atelier.
Start while nobody is watching. Start before it looks impressive. Start before you have the perfect tools. Start before the calendar gives you permission. Start small enough that perhaps nobody else even realizes you’ve begun. And while you’re doing it, remember that the invisible part counts too. The uncertain part counts. The revision counts. The rest counts. The thing you tried and abandoned may still teach you something that appears later in another form. You don’t have to know exactly what the final collection will look like to begin creating it. You only need to understand that when your season eventually arrives, you don’t necessarily want to be standing backstage wondering why nothing is ready. Because Fashion Week never really begins at Fashion Week. The collection existed long before we were invited to see it. And perhaps the life you want next year should begin the same way—not with an enormous declaration on January 1st, but with a quiet decision made on an ordinary day in August, long before anyone else can see what you’re creating. When your season arrives, you shouldn’t have to begin designing your life. You should already be walking into it.
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