What I have learned from teaching fashion drawing remotely

Initially the prospect of teaching fashion sketch remotely filled me with dread. I thought longingly about the wooden horses and easels of past classrooms in which I had taught drawing for fashion. The live models, and the suitcase of vintage garments they would generously bring to wear while they posed, the plastic accessories and lengths of fabric they would drape around their form to make shapes and create attitude. The tall windows letting in plenty of sunlight and the friendly janitor who happily wiped away the coating of charcoal dust and emptied the giant bins of discarded newsprint at the end of the day. The shabby dust-mote-filled drawing lab is a magical place rarely experienced by fashion designers after they leave fashion school. Then it’s mostly sterile cubicles and corporate boardrooms.