Meet Chawis Saelim

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Chawis Saelim. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Chawis below.

Hi Chawis, we’re so appreciative of you taking the time to share your nuggets of wisdom with our community. One of the topics we think is most important for folks looking to level up their lives is building up their self-confidence and self-esteem. Can you share how you developed your confidence?

As an artist it is hard sometimes to find your voice, the most important way to develop your confidence is to know how to manage your ego. Having an ego is important because it makes you forget what other people think about you and focus on your creation and passion. It can certainly come back and bite you if you are not open to some forms of criticism, you have to know when to turn it on and off and learn from your past work. Lastly, for me the most important key to developing your confidence and self-esteem is respect for yourself, your creation, and others, never lose your value, keep improving, and live your creative life.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

My name is Chawis Saelim, I’m originally from Bangkok, Thailand, and I moved to Ohio in 2012. I graduated from Columbus College of Art and Design in 2024, majoring in fashion design. I am an independent artist/dressmaker, expressing my expression and feeling through clothes and letting them speak for themselves. I mainly focused on tailoring and couture techniques, because I believe in it’s fundamental and the core of how clothes should be made. I never have been interested in fashion, I used to think of them as just clothes nothing else and they may still be at the end of the day. Growing up I loved to try to explore myself with different kinds of things, trying to find something that I could use as a tool to find my voice as an artist. After learning about the work and philosophy of designers like Yohji Yamamoto, and Rei Kawakubo, I looked at clothes in a way that is art, philosophy, and creation that expresses oneself as the wearer and the creator, not just about trends and business. At that moment I realize what kind of direction I want to take, and I don’t want to be on the main road of fashion. My goal is to create beautiful clothes that need no book of explanation and do my own thing on the side street of fashion.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

In my journey, one of the most important things to have is passion. I believe that without passion, you cannot truly express your work to the best. Another is to learn how to manage your ego and don’t forget who you are and lose yourself. I have seen many people wanting to be like the others who succeed, but by doing you will never be unique and eventually, you will not be happy in the long run if things do not work out the way you expected to. Remember that everything has been done before you have to be inspired by those that you admire or, digest it and create your own. Lastly is important to always keep in mind that failure is a motivation for the next thing, if you want to achieve something great you have to keep learning and not be afraid to fail.

We’ve all got limited resources, time, energy, focus etc – so if you had to choose between going all in on your strengths or working on areas where you aren’t as strong, what would you choose?

I do believe that learning the fundamentals and getting to know what you are seeing or working with is important. As someone who desires to create clothes getting to know the fundamentals and history will reduce what you are seeing into more simple forms and you can properly build upon it. I believe in time and dedication, if you sacrifice yourself to learning and creating, for me you always find better results.
Beautiful things take time.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @chawis_noir

Image Credits

Group shots/runway/backstage shots by: Clarissa Jane
The rest: Chawis Saelim