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Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Does my pocket protector make me look fat?

I bet you've never heard of a fashion engineer. Don't worry, you're not the only one. My name is Qiaodan (often pronounced as Jordan) Jin Stone. FYI, Jin Stone is my complete last name, no hyphen. Once upon a time, I wanted to be a fashion designer, yet through a series of miracles (both big and small), I managed to get into MIT and now am trying to figure out a major. For the longest time, engineering was never my interest. Fashion was. Fashion still is. Strangely enough (due to a little thing called calculus) in high school, math was my favorite subject. Naturally, engineering projects drew my interest and soon I was making robots by day and sketching evening gowns by night. With three inch heels and a garter protector (imagine a pocket protector but a garter belt), I surprisingly became the captain of my high school math team and founder of its robotics club. It was great fun. Didn't help my career choices though...

See, I didn't want to be a fashion designer anymore. There was something missing from clothing - the ability to directly affect people's lives. Sure a little black dress can bring about confidence, but can it also locate its wearer if s/he were lost or regulate its temperature to keep its wearer comfortable? I'm too much of a pragmatist to just love an aesthetic design. A tool must be both pretty and useful. Beauty and utility became my personal optimization problem. That's why I ultimately decided to pursue my own (at the moment nonexistent) field - Fashion Engineering. Whether I'll be successful or not, who knows, but come watch me as I grow up on the fabulous campus of MIT, and let's see how far I can stretch my lace gloved reach.

After all, someone must bring the tech back to clothing tech!