Meet Madeline Schiavi

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Madeline Schiavi a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Madeline, we’re so excited for our community to get to know you and learn from your journey and the wisdom you’ve acquired over time. Let’s kick things off with a discussion on self-confidence and self-esteem. How did you develop yours?

I feel like I’ve always had a really strong sense of self. I remember even when I was really, really young, like in preschool, always feeling a little bit different. Usually, I preferred playing alone, which was sometimes because people didn’t play the games right, or they just didn’t want to play my games at all. Honestly, that has never bothered me. My mom always likes to tell me about when I was little, and how I was so picky about my clothes. I really hated specific kinds of fabric because of the way they felt, and on some days, I just did not want to deal with clothes at all. So, I think early on I was allowed to just pick out my clothes, which definitely helped me develop a sense of style and of what I liked.
Personality wise, I also remember being little, and wondering why people weren’t just being themselves. It’s really easy to tell when someone’s being ingenuine, and I always feel kind of sad from that. there’s only one you in the world. I think that’s great, and I feel like we should all really lean into that.
I’ve always felt that it doesn’t matter what you’re into or what you look like, as long as you’re just being yourself and you’re happy. That’s really all that matters.
There have of course been times where I kind of lost myself a little bit, but I somehow always managed to come back to me. Maybe my voice is just very strong, so it’s easier to find when I’m lost.
I think that’s also part of why I do what I do. I know my work isn’t for everybody, which is totally fine, because it’s absolutely for the people who get it. It’s for people who can hear and understand my voice, and feel like what I have to offer makes them feel like themselves.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

Hello all readers! I definitely know a few of you already, but I’m hoping that some new people can get to know me from this article! My name is Madeline Schiavi, but I usually go by Mads. I’m a fashion designer and artist, and hopefully a soon to be author. I design unique, gorgeous clothes for special women who have a love for all things strange. My art tends to draw inspiration from things that people find bizarre such as insects or anatomy, or things that people don’t tend to like talking about, like mental health. It’s really important that people embrace what they love, so I feel no fear in projecting my unique interests and inspirations upon my work for the world to see. It’s also a major mission of mine to show people that there is beauty in everything; whether that be a beetle, internal suffering, and especially my clients themselves.
A little bit of background on me as an artist; I grew up in a family of scientists, which is extremely evident in my work. Besides subject matter, there’s also a level of technicality and experimentation that goes on within my creation process, which I attribute to the scientific mind that I inherited from my family. Fashion truly has to do with so many aspects of science; draping is physics, dying techniques are chemistry, garment construction and textile Sciences are both Feats of engineering. I feel like the balance between Ingenuity and realistic design also stems from this background. You can never discover something new if you don’t explore, but there are also limitations set upon us by the universe.
I’ve been designing and making clothes since I was about 5 years old. It’s been a lifelong passion of mine, and it was when I was about 16 years old that I decided I was going to change it from a hobby into my life’s purpose. My mom taught me to hand so when I was five, and when I was about ten, I got a sewing machine for Christmas, which I taught myself to use. I started just playing around with sewing household items and then started moving on into clothes. This morphed into doing costume design and creation for my schools’ plays and musicals. I eventually found the perfect program for myself that allowed me to study fashion design, but also social studies, which is another major passion of mine. This was a fashion design program in South Korea, where I got my Associates Degree, and I’m just about to finish my Bachelor of Fine Arts in New York. I’ve been working professionally in the fashion industry for the last year, and am beginning to plan my future as an independent designer.
You can definitely see the scientific, theatrical, and macabre influences in my work, some of which is pictured here in this article. I really hope that if you enjoy what you see here that you will check out more of my work on my website, and continue to follow me on my journey!

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

I think the three best things that have helped me along my way so far have been authenticity, determination, and spontaneity.
Authenticity for sure is probably the most important one. To me, you can’t really be a real artist if you’re not authentic to yourself, your work, and what you love. Author Louise Penny once told an anecdote regarding writing her first book. She had a really hard time writing because she was writing what she thought other people wanted to read. She eventually realized that she should be writing what she wanted to read, which led to a wildly successful book series. I remember hearing this story and thinking that it’s just so true. If you don’t love your work, or you’re not making work that you would truly want, then there’s kind of no point. I think if you love your work, other people will love your work. That passion can transcend through time and space, and be sent to anybody who sees what you’ve made.
Determination is definitely the most obvious one. If you’re not determined to succeed, you never will. If you’re not determined to get better, you never will. If you’re not determined to create, you never will.
Spontaneity is an interesting one. I feel like this is much more in line with design practice. To me this kind of means allowing what pops into your head to have the time and space to exist. If you have this crazy idea, just let it flow, and see where it takes you. Usually in my process something just pops into my head and that’s the product. Sometimes though, it needs workshopping. I might be standing at my mannequin trying to figure out how to fit a specific top, and you really have to improvise and work with the body. I think fashion is a moving thing; you know, clothes are meant to move and be used, but also fashion changes every day. It’s such a fluid industry for something that is so practical and real. You kind of need to have a sense of spontaneity and an ability to improvise to be able to thrive in that kind of environment.

What is the number one obstacle or challenge you are currently facing and what are you doing to try to resolve or overcome this challenge?

For me right now, I think the biggest obstacle or challenge is just considering what I’m going to do in the future. I’m pretty close to graduating at this point, and I’m working on my thesis collection, which is essentially going to establish how I emerge into the industry. I feel like I have a decent amount of Industry experience, and a few good connections that I can rely on for advice or opportunities. The challenging part is, though, simply the next step. I have all of these things that I know I want to do, or feel like I have to do; whether it’s continuing my schooling and maybe get a degree in business practices and entrepreneurship, or continue to work for other companies and build my experience and my finances, or even to just bite the bullet and go ahead and launch myself. I think for young people, we’re so used to being in school. We pretty much only have ever known school at this point in our lives, so being posed with this literally life-changing experience of having to decide, “okay it’s time to officially start my life now,” is so scary and difficult. Truly I know this is not a unique experience, and it’s not even unique to the fashion industry. Every single person entering the workforce, and adulthood, has to face this challenge.
Even though challenges are, you know, challenging, I feel like they’re so imperative to our development as well-rounded people. You can’t learn unless you make a mistake, and you can’t make mistakes unless you try to do something. On top of that, one of my favorite quotes of all time is “it’s only scary because you’ve never done it before.” I feel like all of these little things build up and become this huge daunting task for everybody, but it’s absolutely inescapable, because we need it to be able to move on with our lives.
To overcome this all I can do is just move on, and keep pushing, and working hard. It’s not about resolution; this is something that I’m going to constantly continue facing for the rest of my life, and I’m honestly really excited for that.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://madelineschiavi.myportfolio.com/home
• Instagram: @mads_except_its_art
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/madeline-schiavi