I heard about the Atlas Fashion Show during my first semester at ASU.
Not because I was invited by anyone who knew me or believed in me. I just happened to receive an email—a general invitation to attend Atlas Season VI. I had no idea what it was, and I didn’t know anyone involved. I just thought it sounded like a cool experience, so I went.
I was studying fashion design at Arizona State University at the time. I was still learning the basics and still excited to be somewhere new, doing something that felt like it was pulling me forward, even when I couldn’t explain why. I had just taken my first sewing class and was genuinely happy to be learning something new along the journey.
Then I walked into Atlas Season VI, and something shifted.
The production level was insane. It felt like something out of Vogue—editorial, cinematic, precise. It was the kind of show you would expect from a team that had been doing this for decades.
But throughout the entire show, I kept hearing a voice in my head say: You could do this.
It wasn’t a whisper. It was clear and direct. So clear that after the show ended, I tracked down the creator just to have a conversation.
His name was Logan. He told me that he and a group of friends had started Atlas in his parents’ backyard a few years earlier.
A backyard.
That one detail did something to me because the show I had just watched—that level of vision and execution—had started in someone’s backyard. Hearing that didn’t make the dream feel smaller. It made it feel possible.
I followed his Instagram before I left that night, and he told me he would be looking for designers for his upcoming fall show.
I said, “Bet. Can’t wait.”
That was spring 2025.
Fall came. I had transferred to Montclair State University to continue pursuing fashion design, but I was still living in Arizona. I was taking online classes so I could remain available for the potential fall show.
Then Logan made the announcement.
Designers could submit four sketches of possible looks for the show. I submitted mine and was told I would know within a few weeks whether I had made it.
My designs were inspired by Japanese and Chicano aesthetics, with oversized, cropped silhouettes meant to pair with the jeans I had recently designed and manufactured.
I was optimistic and excited right up until the moment I saw a post announcing the date of the show. The designers had been told that details about the show would not be released until the finalists were notified.
My heart broke—to the point of tears.
The only thing I could do was call my mother.
I felt like a kid who had gotten his hopes up, only to have them shattered again. I was used to that feeling, but I thought this time would be different.
She listened, gave me words of encouragement, and then said something simple that gave me just enough to hold on to:
“Technically, based on the three-week timeline they gave you during the submission process, you should know by tomorrow.”
Just like that, I had my glimmer of hope back.
She said, “Call me tomorrow with the good news!”
I sniffled, held back my tears, and said, “Will do.”
I believed in that glimmer of hope so much that I bought a sewing machine that same day.
Without knowing whether I would ever need it. Without a letter. Without confirmation. Just faith—and a mother’s intuition that somehow felt more reliable than any email.
The very next day, the acceptance letter arrived.
I called my mother, ecstatic. Like always, she said, “I told you so. Now you better get to work.”
A few days later, I had my first meeting with Logan and the other designers. That was when he dropped some news I was not prepared for.
Not four looks.
Ten complete looks.
I could feel my heart drop into my stomach. This was only my second semester of design school, and I was taking classes online. I hadn’t touched a sewing machine in months.
The thought that ran through my mind was simple and terrifying:
Do I even remember what I’m doing?
Then I remembered to pray.
I prayed for peace and clarity, and that was exactly what I received.
I found my answer in what I like to call YouTube University.
Watch someone sew. Pause. Repeat. Do it yourself.
It took days to complete my first piece—a denim kimono—but the moment it was finished, I knew I was on the right path. Something clicked inside me. The vision started coming into focus.
What followed were weeks of endless nights alone.
Tracing patterns. Pinning fabric. Cutting. Sewing. Pressing. Starting over.
The house was quiet except for the hum of the sewing machine and whatever was playing in my headphones. Some nights, I worked until 3 a.m. Not only because I had to, but because I couldn’t stop seeing the thing I was trying to build.
I refused to let the distance between the vision and reality remain wide for one more day than it had to.
A few weeks later, we had a casting call at Corella & Co., a modeling school in Scottsdale. More than one hundred models came through.
I had no formal experience with casting. No rubric. No checklist.
All I had was a picture in my head.
I envisioned a group of anime characters. All different. Some tall, some short, some slim, some powerful. Like the cast of Akame ga Kill—a found family of misfits who didn’t look like they belonged together until they did.
That was the energy I was searching for.
So when it was my turn to ask questions during the casting, I asked one thing:
“Do you watch anime?”
I wanted to find my tribe in this space. People who understood the world I was trying to build without me having to explain it from scratch.
Somehow, some way, I did.
Rachel. Janny. Belén. Xavier. Alayna. Mel.
Six people who understood it immediately.
Xavier and Alayna were still students at Corella & Co. and had never even walked in a show, but they fit the archetypes I was looking for. That was enough for me.
I still needed four more models.
I was at the gym one day when I noticed a really tall guy across the room. There was a mystique to him—something quiet and powerful that I couldn’t ignore.
His name was Ray.
He had never modeled and had no social media. He also made sure to let me know that he hated being in front of people.
I told him he was exactly who I was looking for.
It took less convincing than I expected.
He was in.
As Ray and I were walking out, a shorter guy with a muscular build who worked at the front desk looked up and asked, “Are you looking for models?”
I said, “Do you model?”
He said, “No, but I want to.”
“You’re in.”
I was down to two.
I reached out to two of my former basketball players, Hasnain and Salmaan. Both had zero modeling experience, but both were exactly right for the vision.
I had found my misfits.
I had ten looks and ten models, but then one final outfit idea came to me, and I wasn’t willing to let it go.
So I called one of my best friends—someone I knew would say yes before I even finished the sentence.
Indeo.
He had never modeled a day in his life, but I knew him, and I knew his energy. He was always down to try something new.
He flew in from Hawaii just to walk for me.
Eleven models. Eleven looks.
Now I needed the right music to complete the vision.
I wanted to create a dream. I wanted to begin with ambient sound and take the audience on a journey through the world I had been building alone at 3 a.m. for the previous six weeks.
I found what I needed in Kanye West and Kid Cudi.
I built the set like a dream sequence, with ambient music opening the show and pulling the audience somewhere between sleep and awareness.
Then, as the finale approached, I used the sound of a 1990s alarm clock to transition into “I Wonder” by Kanye West.
It woke the audience from the dream.
It showed them what dreaming had produced.
I walked the runway with all eleven models in front of me.
Words cannot fully describe what that felt like.
I had transmuted a thought into something material. Something real that people could see, feel, and stand in the same room with.
It was the best feeling I had ever experienced.
This was only the beginning of the Japré journey, but it will always remind me of what faith and hope can build—before the proof arrives, before anyone believes, before anything exists except the desire in your heart and the willingness to act on it before you feel ready.
I bought the sewing machine before the letter came.
That is the part I never want to forget.
By Any Dream Necessary.
Japré Parker
Founder, House of Japré