Elijah Smith is a Rainier Scholars (Cohort 26) senior at Seattle Academy of Arts and Sciences (SAAS) preparing to study fashion design. Instead of pursuing a traditional STEM pathway, Elijah has charted something different. In doing so, he’s built a blueprint that other arts-oriented scholars can follow.
Elijah Smith is a born artist. From the beginning at Rainier Scholars, Elijah Smith sensed that something differentiated him from his peers. “As much as I love STEM,” he said, “I had a hard time seeing myself in that.” Elijah valued the Rainier Scholars program, but the typical path outlined for him didn’t align with his own drive and desires.
His love of fashion didn’t arrive in the classroom. It came through the music pumping through his uncles’ cars in South Seattle, through his Filipino family’s deep ties to hip hop culture, and most vividly, through the sneaker collection of one uncle who owned every Jordan from 1 through 13, displayed in his room like a museum. “It was kind of like the Holy Grail to me,” Elijah said. He may or may not have borrowed a pair or two to wear to school when the coast was clear.
Musical artists, like A$AP Rocky, who weave references to high fashion throughout their music drew Elijah deeper into the world of design. Eventually he found his way to Virgil Abloh, the late creative director of Louis Vuitton menswear and founder of Off-White. Abloh built his career at the intersection of architecture, music, and streetwear. Abloh studied architecture, DJed on the side, and became one of fashion’s most influential voices. The parallel to Elijah’s own trajectory is hard to miss. Elijah DJs. He has a deep interest in architecture. And now he’s heading to college for fashion design.
“I feel like there’s a lot of parallels,” Elijah said. “His work was very unapologetically him — very confident in what he put out. And even though a lot of people say his work was plagiarism, I feel like it was taking something and putting his own twist on it and making it himself. That’s something I think is really cool.” If you listen to Elijah talk about his own design philosophy, the path chartered by Abloh is a pretty good description of where Elijah wants to go.
An Internship in Creativity
As a freshman, Elijah did something that would quietly reshape his high school experience. Inspired by images of Abloh working in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, he went to his Rainier Scholars advisor to learn about any internships where he could learn creative software. Rainier Scholars recognized that Elijah’s path called for something different and created an opportunity specifically for him. That summer, he interned with the Rainier Scholars marketing and communications team, working directly with staff to get real, hands-on experience with the tools that professional designers use every day.
The team remembers Elijah’s first days as a quiet and reserved student. He does too. When he wrapped up his internship, Elijah was noticeably transformed. “I was a very shy kid in middle school,” Elijah said. “After doing that [internship], I learned the importance of networking and advocating for yourself.”
The design skills he built that summer have followed him everywhere since. He’s now the go-to graphic designer at Seattle Academy. When his school’s music production teacher needed designers for an art gallery show, students across every class pointed in his direction.
“Those skills have gone a long way,” Elijah said with a humble laugh.
With renewed confidence following the internship and a desire to build stronger community connections, Elijah started attending his school’s AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) affinity group. He also joined the Rainier Scholars’ Conclave program, which centers culture, identity, and self-knowledge. Today, Elijah leads the AAPI club at Seattle Academy. He was a JV lacrosse team captain and managed the basketball program for three seasons. And he runs the biggest fashion club at his school.
“Through learning who I am, it gave me confidence to believe in myself.”
Getting Into His Dream School
The college search process came with its own version of forging a new trail. Art school admissions — with its portfolio requirements, school-specific challenges, and entirely different set of institutional rankings — was largely uncharted territory within Rainier Scholars. “I’m one of very few kids to major in fine arts,” he says. “So, they [the academic counselors] don’t have very much knowledge into what schools are best fit for me.”
Through a connection his mother made — she’s a hairstylist, and one of her clients knew someone working in fashion — Elijah was able to get in touch with a professor at one of the country’s top fashion schools. That professor gave him an honest, inside view of the program and its alumni culture. This shifted Elijah’s thinking and pointed him toward a list of other strong fashion programs. Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) was already on Elijah’s radar, but what sealed it felt almost cinematic. First, SCAD ads started appearing everywhere online. Then, a week later, Pharrell Williams gave a talk at SCAD. “It just felt like that was kind of my destiny,” he says.
When he got the acceptance email from SCAD, it was 5 or 6 a.m. on Thanksgiving break. The time zone difference meant the news arrived while he was still half-asleep. He opened the email, cracked a smile, then fell back to sleep. He saved the news for Thanksgiving dinner that night — which got the big reaction he’d expected, especially from his mom.
Advice for Arts Scholars
Elijah has a wealth of knowledge for younger scholars who feel the pull toward art, design, or humanities. “A lot of people think success is a mold — that there’s one path. That’s not true.” You have the freedom to lay out whatever path you want.
He also knows not everyone has parents who support an unconventional path. “People are going to tell you it won’t work — that art isn’t going to make you money. But if you feel like this is what you want to do and what you love, it doesn’t matter what anybody else has to say.”
His advice is to trust your gut and lean into vulnerability. “Art is very ambiguous. No one can teach you how to tell your story. Learning to have confidence in yourself and give yourself grace to be vulnerable — that’s the thing that will get you the furthest.”
On the practical side, Elijah also recommends that you get an early start. He learned this lesson the hard way. He had been deep in the application process for another school — working on his portfolio for weeks, convinced he knew exactly what was required — when he discovered just two days before the deadline that the portfolio specifications had changed. The school had updated their requirements without making it obvious on their website. “Being that it was two days before — that was crazy,” he says. He pulled it off, but the experience rattled him. “You never know how much work something will need.” Give yourself more time than you think.
He also recommends that you document as you go (all that annotation practice put to good use!). Art schools want to see the full arc of your creative process: mood boards, in-progress sketches, the thinking behind the final piece. “I don’t really do mood boards,” he admits, “and I’m not very good at sketching, so I just make things.” Getting into the habit of capturing that process, even informally, can make the difference between a portfolio that tells your story and one that just shows your output.
What Comes Next
This fall, Elijah will start at Seattle University — not his original plan, but a strategic one. Financial constraints shifted his path, but they didn’t derail it. He’s planning to transfer after his first year to either SCAD or Parsons (he’s been accepted to both), two of the top fashion design programs in the country. It’s a detour, not a defeat. And by starting at Seattle U, he can stay grounded in the city where he built his network while building his portfolio and preparing for the competitive transfer process.
Elijah’s willingness to sit with uncertainty — and call it exciting rather than just frightening — has defined his entire Rainier Scholars journey. “I’m nervous to see what happens, but the idea of not knowing is also what excites me.”
For a kid who grew up sneaking into his uncle’s Jordan collection and listening to musicians describe clothes like poetry, who taught himself Illustrator as a freshman and became his school’s go-to designer, who found his way back to himself through culture and community, uncertainty has always been part of the territory. Plans change. Paths bend. He’s learned to move through it with confidence. And he’s just getting started.
