The Maze Is the Point

Hannah told me she’d gotten into fashion school in Munich—starting in September—and instead of just being happy about it, she was frightened. This after years of detours. The failed entry exam for the design program in Augsburg at eighteen. Switching schools, ending up in Kaufbeuren, which is how we met. A year in Cologne studying business engineering, which is what happens when the fear of not having stable income temporarily wins over everything else. Then back home. And now: Munich. Fashion. The actual thing.

The books were already on her nightstand. Pattern-cutting guides. Fashion illustration manuals. A biography of the great women designers. She was doing homework she’d assigned herself, and the seriousness of it was making things worse.

She told me she was afraid of walking in and not measuring up—other students arriving with completed apprenticeships, years of portfolio work, art in their Abitur. She’d gotten through a three-hour entrance interview, which seemed like evidence she belonged there, but evidence doesn’t touch that particular kind of fear.

I recognized the shape of it that week. Not fashion specifically—but the threshold thing. The dream lives in abstraction and you can want it cleanly, without exposure. The moment it becomes a specific building, a September date, a room full of people who’ve been at this longer than you have, the wanting turns into risk. Now you could fail, specifically, in a way that counts.

She said something that stayed with me: that people voluntarily walk into hedge labyrinths. Nobody forces them. The long way around is the point. She’d been taking the long way for years and it had led here anyway.

I still think about that when I’m standing in front of something I’ve wanted for so long the wanting has become part of me. The detours weren’t the problem. They were just the route.