Sean Li doesn't make money making clothing. When I visit his workshop, located in the basement of a Pilsen apartment that he shares with several people, Sean tells me that after buying fabric and other supplies, he doesn't even break even. He thinks of his designs as vacation-wear, but he hasn't been on a vacation in forever; he doesn't even go clothes shopping unless he's tagging along with friends. That kind of recreational spending would eat into his budget for everything surrounding us down here.
Sean and I sit under a string of holiday lights hanging from the basement ceiling. Whatever direction you look, there is some combination of a sewing machine and serger; dozens of patterns lying in stacks and dangling from hangers; racks of completed garments; shelves of fabric; an ironing board; and a shelf lined with mementos, including an action figure of New York Mets great Mike Piazza, a Hello Kitty-branded airplane boarding pass, and several empty Dankwoods tubes.
Sean learned how to sew when he was eight years old, but he didn't get serious about it until college. Since then, he has gotten steadily more dedicated, to the point that his workshop sometimes resembles a lair. "I'm getting really good at (making clothing)," Sean tells me, "but I'm not really getting better at social skills. I just stay down here and go crazy."
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Going crazy entails cutting fabric with pinpoint precision and then ironing and pinning, pinning and ironing, until each piece of material is arranged just . . . . . . so. This prep work is grinding, monotonous, but it eventually gives way to sewing, which Sean considers the fun part. While Sean works at his Singer, his Macbook plays music in the corner. Next to him, a black cat named Demi purrs contentedly on a bed of fabric scraps. If Sean misses a single stitch, he stops for corrections, but these instances are increasingly rare. Throughout our conversation, Sean is modest to the point of being self-effacing. He says that he is just now getting "really good" at sewing, but when you look at his finished work, that's obviously an understatement. Sewing gives Sean access to a flow state, in which hours pass unnoticed. Then comes more grinding monotony, as he obsesses over each end and opening of the garment. He hides raw edges with French seams, concealing all signs of his hand like an assassin wiping down gun metal. In Sean's words, he is "OCD about everything looking like it's factory-made."
With this level of quality, production for one garment can take a full week. That doesn't leave Sean time to work on marketing. He doesn't have an elevator pitch about his design philosophy. There's no five-year plan in a Powerpoint deck. Sean isn't on Twitter, but if he were, he doesn't have a TED Talk to pin to his feed.
No impressive sales numbers, no cult following, no enticing brand identity. So, why would a fashion journalist pay attention to Sean? There's the quality of his work, which in itself deserves attention, and the real possibility that Sean will soon streamline his process and define his vision well enough to emerge as one of Chicago's most exciting independent designers. But there's something else that's way more exciting: an opportunity to redefine what we consider success.
What if celebrity and sales numbers aren't the best metrics for gauging a designer's success? For example, what if it's more impressive when a designer builds Einstein-Rosen bridges that connect Port Arthur, Texas of the 1990s with pre-colonial Taiwan?
In that case, Sean Li is already one of the most successful designers you'll ever met.
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Summers in Taipei
Joe Jarvis
Sean Li
Joe
Sean
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Joe
Sean
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Joe
Sean
Joe
Sean
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Economies
When Sean talks about his budget, it sounds like the only expenses he couldn't write off are cannabis and White Sox games. Actually, both are work-related. Weed helps Sean lock in and maintain focus through all the pinning and ironing and sewing and finishing. When he takes himself to baseball games, he doesn't care who wins or loses. Baseball itself appeals to him. It's restorative. He sits in the stadium enjoying a sport that his parents love, and that to Sean partially defines what being Taiwanese means. The White Sox stadium, formerly known as US Cellular Field, is a battery charger, and Sean redirects the energy into his work.
When Sean stapled together his current notebook using paper scraps from the optometrist's office where he recently worked, it saved him the expense of buying a notebook. But Sean's economy goes beyond money. Even though one garment can take a week to produce, Sean makes every stitch with precision and intention. That's an economy of movement, and elsewhere his economy is evident in how he thinks about and utilizes materials.
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