We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kiyonori Sudo a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Kiyonori, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. I’m sure there have been days where the challenges of being an artist or creative force you to think about what it would be like to just have a regular job. When’s the last time you felt that way? Did you have any insights from the experience?

-Are you happier as an artist or creative? – Yes -Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job? – When I was young , I did not want to do it. Now I wanna try to do regular job sometime. Haha

When I was a child, I wanted to work as a creator of some kind in the future, but because my family only worked in a company, I could not understand the work of creators.
So the only job like a creator that even my family could understand was being a hair stylist at the time.

In my future vision, I don’t want to work only in hair salons as a hair stylist.
I wanted to work as a hair stylist in the fashion industry, not only as a hair stylist in a hair salon, so I first worked in a hair salon to learn basic skills and then started working in the fashion industry as an assistant.
When I started working at a hair salon, there was a popular TV drama in Japan where popular actors played hair stylists, and hair stylist was a very popular profession.
There were so many people who wanted to become hair stylists that I hated my job for the first 4-5 years, and quit 3 times in total.
At that time I was backpacking around Europe, Asia, and America. It was great experience for my life.
I learned many of other country culture ( fashion , Music ) , life , philosophy.
After I came back from my travels, I worked in hair salons and as a hair assistant for photo shoots.
In 2013, I made the decision to live in New York and moved to the US.
When I first came to New York, I went to language school to study English and worked as an intern for various hair stylists.
In 2015, I obtained an O-1VISA (artist visa) and started working at a hair salon, and while working as an assistant, I gradually became able to work as a hair stylist in the fashion industry myself.
In 2019, I joined L’Atelier NYC, an agency for famous hair stylists and makeup artists in the fashion industry.

When I was young, I definitely wanted to be a creator. I didn’t want to be a regular company employee.
The Japanese education system and company rules seemed so boring and old-fashioned to me.
Now that I have experienced various things in my life, I believe that any job can be considered as a creator, depending on how you think.

In my opinion, an artist or a creator is not the name of a profession, but a way of thinking.　This is something I have only recently begun to realize.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

When I first started my current job, I hardly knew anyone, so I worked a few part-time jobs and waited for connections to be made. Since then, I’ve been getting more and more jobs through introductions, so I’m really grateful to the people around me.

My job is to work as a hairstylist for shoots, styling and sometimes cutting hair.
I always try to create the hair the client wants quickly and carefully.
To the outside world, it may seem like just styling hair.
I try to make everyone I work with happy, including the models.
I also believe that it is important to create a relaxing environment for everyone, including the models, so that they can enjoy themselves and feel at ease.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

I don’t know about that. As I answered earlier, I think it’s not the profession that matters, but the mindset I think it’s important to share today the way we think.

Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

if i had this 2023 technology , like a internet , youtube , instagram . I could lean so many things by my self.

I

Contact Info:

• Website: https://lateliernyc.com/artist/kiyonori/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kyo_sud/