#kit sim

Kyosuke Kiryu Stim Board! (for @lugia!)

To me, fashion is the world’s greatest open-air museum. The astonishing shapes. The exquisite textures. The unexpected colours. Every store window, every well-turned-out passerby — it’s all part of a living exhibition.

Growing up in my small village in Malaysia, fashion was only something to dream about.

It’s hard to picture life in my country only a few decades ago. My village had a school, but no cinema. The nearest small city was miles away.

There was little money for clothes and what clothing we had was made by our village seamstress.  We received new clothes once a year—on Chinese New Year—and it was a gala event.

One year, I designed a dress for my mother. With no glossy magazines or fancy department stores around, all I knew about fashion came from old movies on TV. The movies were black-and-white; the colours came straight from my imagination.

My dress was more like a Hollywood inspired ball gown than anything suitable for a village mom. But my wise mother was very diplomatic. She worked with our local seamstress to adapt my creation to something more practical.

When time came for college, there were no courses in fashion design. Instead, I studied accounting and marketing, eventually earning my MBA in E-Business from Temple University in Philadelphia.

In the years since, through my work and my consulting practice, I’ve had the privilege of helping world-class fashion apparel brands develop strategies for recognizing and leveraging their opportunities in the emerging omni-channel e-commerce marketplace.

But the love of fashion remains very personal. And fashion is still my favourite museum.

For me, fashion is still the world’s greatest museum. Only now, the museum is where I live.