UncategorizedNovember 12, 2024

Meet Long Beach Fashion Designer: Sarah Khan

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Sarah Khan.

Sarah, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I started drawing/doing fine arts when I was about 10, and also started sewing at the same age. By the time I was in middle school, I would sew my own jackets and things simply because there was a style I wanted and couldn’t find in stores. In high school, I went to Long Beach Poly and was awarded a medal by the fine arts department for my work and involvement throughout my high school tenure. But despite that, I thought I would “be reasonable” and pursue a non-arts related bachelor’s degree.

I studied Comparative Literature at UCLA, completed my bachelor’s in 3 years and was accepted into the Comparative Literature Master’s program at the University College of London at 21. UCL is a G5 school (top 5 schools in the UK) and only accepts about 25 or less (I can’t recall the exact number anymore) international students for this program. I was accepted and then didn’t go. As much as I respected my faculty and professors throughout my undergraduate coursework, I knew very early that academia want where I wanted to establish my career and so decided that further study in a specified field like comparative lit would only pigeonhole me in that line of work. But then graduating early only meant that I’d graduated in 2007, one of the worst times to try to enter the workforce in the wake of the economic crisis. So I took the first job I was offered, which still came a year after finishing my undergrad and was a technical editing position for a quality control consulting firm. We worked mainly with pharmaceutical and medical device companies and my job was to review the content of the reports that came back from our inspections at their suppliers’ facilities. So in this role, I was working with a handful of genuinely good medical companies that were the front runners in their industry, but many more that exemplified firsthand the toxicity of big pharma. That coupled with my own company’s very toxic work environment made for a very stressful work life with very little salary compensation. I was promoted to middle management as a Content Manager within 6 months of being there, but due to the size and company politics that became the glass ceiling I was relegated to for the remaining 2.5 years, I stayed there.

In that time, since I knew I couldn’t grow my position any further, I focused on growing my accounts and came to realize that I actually love business and managing in a very general sense. But once my workload got to an obscene capacity, I decided that I needed to switch gears entirely. I figured if I was going to work this hard for this little, it might as well be doing something I love. So I enrolled in the part-time Fashion Technology program at LA Trade Tech. While I was there, I built my skills and portfolio and eventually landed an assistant designer position at Eastwest Clothing. They developed 2 clothing lines: Language, which used to be sold to brands like Anthropology and T-Refinery, which was like a higher end American Apparel. Unfortunately, the company shut down and I was laid off. The contemporary fashion industry was hit very hard by the economic crisis and it’s dissolution has a direct correlation with the dissolution of the middle class in the past 10 years. So from there I went to work for a small jewelry brand and boutique in west LA by the name of Amy Ming. That was a very small operation, so I had to wear a lot of different hats from assistant to a content manager to sales rep. Ultimately the demands of that job and the brands’ direction were becoming unsuitable with regards to my design schooling and career, so I left. Since then I’ve been focusing more on my own work as a designer and building a cohesive body of work that is reflective of me as a designer. I actually haven’t finished my fashion tech degree at trade tech at this point in time. Throughout all of this, I’d continued schooling in the evenings and also attended to multiple severe family emergencies and ultimately by this past spring needed to take a break. But I plan on ending and finishing this upcoming January. As of right now, in regards to my current projects, I’m working towards building a contemporary streetwear line and pursue finding for it through crowdsourcing methods. I am a massive music nerd and consider myself a student of hip hop, and then also I grew up in Long Beach during hip hop’s golden era, so streetwear would be a great avenue for me to launch my work and personal brand as a designer.

So at present, my main focus is on my streetwear brand called Lunatiq. On the side, I have a number of other projects in flux: I’m still developing my higher end samples, in order to simply utilize and express myself as an artist through garment design. I have a nonprofit type of brand that I’m developing product prototypes for and off that focuses on repurposing used South Asian garments into “high end stuffed animals” with the intended beneficiaries being Syrian refugees. This effort is in a memorandum of my aunt and cousin who were at the center of the family crisis I’d mentioned earlier and have both since passed away. I design and handmake jewelry that I sell on the side. And finally, I’m working with a local Long Beach hip-hop/punk duo on their branding and merchandise graphics. So at present, I technically am not employed by anyone in the fashion industry, but I most certainly am very busy.

Has it been a smooth road?
Challenges with regards to the industry haven’t been so much in regards to getting my foot in the door, as many assumed, but finding a stable position. The fashion industry is considered a luxury industry and especially with the rise of fast fashion, higher end/quality driven brands have suffered. This industry is one of the slowest in terms of recovering from the economic collapse. And that coupled with cheap Chinese manufacturing has made it very difficult to sustain any brand that is produced locally.

Besides that, personal challenges have been very pronounced for me. My aunt and cousin that I spoke of previously are very poignant figures in my life. My cousin was born with Patau Syndrome Trisomi 13 when I was about 8 years old. I flew out to Canada with my mom and brother within days of her birth. Since then her mother has been my hero due to the unconditional and inexhaustible care, love, and compassion I watched her raise my cousin with. My cousin was a medical miracle to survive into her 20’s as 90% of infants with her condition don’t survive past their first year. About 5 years ago, my aunt was diagnosed with breast cancer and ovarian cancer. She survived the first bout, and during that time, my mom and I regularly made trips out to see her and support as much as we could with my cousin’s care. But then her ovarian cancer metastasized in her brain and she passed away about 3 years ago. After that, my mom was trying to get guardianship and in the meanwhile had made arrangements for my cousin’s care with our other aunt in India. This past January we flew out to India to essentially check up on her and visit, as the guardianship process had been utterly halted by getting father. We spent her last birthday with her and she passed away this past spring.

Compounded by these events were other severe emergencies. I have an uncle in England I’m very close to that had a seizure/aneurysm, but has miraculously survived. Last year’s spring, another aunt who was like a grandmother to me passed away. A very good friend of mine also passed away. My cat who had been my rock through all of this passed away after 13 years together. Essentially there have been quite a few deaths and illnesses and I’ve been very present in attending to these people in the time period leading up to certain deaths. Both aunts I had stayed at their bedsides through the night the week leading up to their deaths and then subsequently personally performed their burial rites (religiously and culturally we don’t embalm). So in an abbreviated sense, these are the events that have taken an emotional toll on me and led to the decision to take a break from the schooling at least.

What are your plans for the future?
My plan at present is to work towards building my streetwear line, jewelry line, and “nonprofit” (although due to the way I’m developing this project, it may not qualify as a certified nonprofit, which is why I use the quotes”. If my streetwear line does well and can sustain its profits and growth, I want to develop a youth program that benefits from some of those profits and is focused on essentially mentoring youths in underprivileged areas on career prospects in creative and arts driven industries. Just from my exposure in the fashion industry, it’s apparent that there are so many jobs that incorporate a creative outlook that is stable, well-paying, and entirely reachable goals. For example, a good patternmaker not only has job security but can sometimes make six figures and you can go to LA Trade Tech and pay community college tuition to get certified as a patternmaker. The entertainment industry has plenty of jobs like that as well. My point is that there are so many more parts to the cogs that is the machine that is the fashion industry or music industry that you may not know of but could be the perfect job for your combined skill sets. Couple that with the social norm of creative fields being considered a craps shoot of a career goal, and many kids, like myself, won’t even bother trying out the gate. My goal is to not only teach kids off these types of opportunities, but to encourage them to pursue and expand on their passions, better themselves, and set goals that progress their stature in life and in their communities. I want to help them really explore what creative outlet is right for them and then try to support them in fostering that into a career outlet. For some time now, I’ve decided that any major type of project or business I’d pursue would have some form of philanthropic project attached to it in its plans simply because I think what’s more important than making a profit is what you do with it.

I’ve developed my long-term plans over quite a long period of time and I guess you can say they’re lifelong plans. Ultimately I want to have a fashion house under my name on which I want a small handful of brands that address a spectrum of customers and price points. Within that, I want my high-end signature brand under my name that functions in size, similar to Vivienne Westwood. She’s one of my major industry idols and maintains a global presence with only a small to midsize team. If I manage to build substantial profits with these brands, I plan on sourcing a sizeable amount of profit towards building what I consider to be a “Battered Women and Children’s Boarding Trade School” in third world countries. Essentially I want to build a college campus-like facility with academic quarters and room and board for women and children in abusive circumstances. In many third world countries, like India (where my family is from), women are trapped in horrific abusive relationships and due to multiple societal and familial factors are completely dependent on the abuser for their livelihood. What I want is to build a refuge that provides them and any children that may also be involved with a safe place to stay, education, and psychological healing. I want these women to learn a trade of their choosing, which they will later be assisted in finding employment in. Employment that is a viable option for them to become financially independent. While they are learning, I want their children to have proper education, and all involved parties to receive therapy. A big issue in cases like these is that many don’t realize that what’s happening to them is wrong and often return to the abuser. Upon “graduating” from their program, I want to provide them with transitory assistance. Help them find appropriate schools for their children to continue their education, move into their new homes, and adjust to a financially and mentally independent life.

So essentially these are my life long goals in various stages. My stuffed animals project is like the first step and has aspects in its planning that relate to these other goals on a microcosmic level in order to test things out on a small scale. That and right now in terms of resources, I really only have the capacity to do something small like this for now.

Let’s explore some of the challenges you’ve faced along the way. What was the most difficult part of your career so far?
Although things had been chaotically building up already, I think the time I felt the strain the most was probably up until very recently. From last year’s spring when I lost my dad’s sister and my friend, to this past spring when I lost my disabled cousin. We’re approaching the third anniversary of her mother’s burial this Halloween and I still have a hard time with whether or not I should be celebrating it. But what I felt when I lost my cousin was just unreal. This is someone I’d been with and had intermittently taken care of within days of her being born and then days of her passing. To put it very viscerally, I honestly loved helping her do things like going to the restroom and bathing, especially when she’d ask me because I knew it meant how much she trusted me, and there are very few people in the world she trusted that much. So it’s like, how do you cope with losing someone who was like your kid sister? Then beyond that, the sheer level of how concentrated all the losses were just felt unreal; 1 aunt, 1 friend, 1 cousin, and 3 cats in about a year. It sounds silly to count my cats in all of this and please don’t insist on including it in the article because I am already very much jokingly the cat lady among my friends. But the reason why I include them is because let me put it this way, my biggest soft spot is with kids and animals; I’ve had a LOT of pets growing up and they were always what helped me get through tough times and I just loved them unconditionally. For many people they’re not very close to their extended family either and so what was my “hardest time” wouldn’t be nearly as difficult for them, but that’s all relative to the scope of any one person’s experiences and life. In the case of my scope of experiences and life, these were people that were particularly dear to me. That’s why it was so difficult. The grief that ensued made me want to just give up on life in general. My view and vision of my dreams became foggy and I just couldn’t tell if I was going anywhere at all or just drifting aimlessly. So I decided when I had the energy to do so, to take my mind off of things, I just started working with my stuffed animals. It was something I’d planned on doing for a while and sadly I’d planned on dedicating it to my aunt and cousin before my cousin’s passing, but I figured I needed to do something positive to help me deal with everything. It’s called “Binno and Sakeena”; Binno was my aunt’s nickname and Sakeena was my cousin’s name. So working on that on and off helped, but my own progress had been slow because of my emotional states. Aside from that, I just genuinely invested time and effort towards my spiritual healing and growth. I have a fairly regular spiritual practice in place and I think that’s been a huge component of how I’ve gotten through it. Then I guess the last part was simply focusing on remembering and rexperiencing the sheer joy I feel from doing my work, which is a spiritual experience in its own right. I just love what I do unabashedly and the thrill I get from doing it is indescribable.

Do you ever feel like “Wow, I’ve arrived” or “I’ve made it” or do you feel like the bulk of the story is still unwritten?
At present, I’m not confident enough to even say my career is working out the way I want to by any means, but that has more to do with the spiritual connection I attribute to my career and work than things not working out as planned. What I had initially planned was a plan that was painfully safe and through all the difficult experiences, I’ve come out more brazen and just less cautious about having safety nets. So I think what it’s come to for me, is that I think my life’s purpose and the associated details are very slowly beginning to unveil themselves. As things change, I continuously tweak and adjust my long-term goals accordingly, but like I said, the way I initially thought my career would pan out is somewhat obsolete, but what’s taken its place is something even more beautiful.

In terms of particular moments, about a year ago, I was in the company of a Head Designer and she was looking through some reference garments I had brought from my own closet. This woman is someone who is not only very senior to me in the industry but is also held widely in high esteem. In general, I’m lucky to be a blip on her radar, but in that moment, as she rifled through my own clothes, she looked up at me and just asked, “Who are you? Are you a designer? What do you do? Where are you from?” I told her about trade tech and the work I’d done as an assistant designer very nervously. She said, “Your selection! (In reference to my clothes”, and I just made a joke about how my family thinks I always go for the weirdest things. To that, she said very assertively, “No. THIS is the selection of a DESIGNER.” That and her continued interest and approval of my capabilities gave me a lot of confidence in my ability, which is going towards my work right now.

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