Sewing machines are a common tool in the fashion industry. Photo courtesy of Canva.

San Luis Obispo High School has some of the best electives you could think of. There are electives for almost everything, and all of these electives are very beneficial for students who are interested in learning more about something, especially fashion!

    “I teach real-life skills. Putting your best foot forward and learning how to sew is a lifelong skill. You learn how to iron and wash clothes and things that a lot of kids don’t know how to do,” said fashion and design teacher Leone Avery.

  Unfortunately, some elective classes give off the idea that a certain gender would be more interested in it than the other. For our school’s fashion and design class, the vast difference in numbers between males and females is staggering. 

   Fashion isn’t, and shouldn’t be,  a gendered topic. Those who think it is are missing out on what our fashion class has to offer. You learn many lifelong skills that you can use and inherit from taking the class, on top of getting to use hands-on practice for your take-home projects. 

  “The class is good because I learned how to hem my own clothes and hand sew things. It also teaches you color coordination and other things like that,” said sophomore Rowan Chapman. 

  Every boy in the Fashion class I have enjoys it and thinks the class is fun and entertaining. Sure, there are some electives that boys and girls have more or less interest in, but I also believe that the name can throw off male students into not picking the elective.

   “Fashion and design” can mislead and make boys at our school less intrigued to take the class because it sounds “feminine” or “girly”. It really isn’t. 

  The class has no projects based on gender and lets the students pick whatever they want to do, based on what they are interested in doing.

  “I think the class is dope. We actually do stuff in it and it’s not boring, it’s an easier way to learn,” said senior Michael Peterseim. 

  The amount of stuff covered in the Fashion class is phenomenal, and it’s cool to see stuff you work on actually turn out the way you wanted it to. 

  If you are debating on whether or not to take a fashion class at SLOHS, you should definitely give it a shot. It’s a lot more fun than you might think.