To the eleven who walked the Silk Road runway,

First — thank you. Walking a runway takes nerve, especially the first time, and the eleven of you brought it. I was the one with the microphone that night, asking what you were carrying and what changed when you stepped off. I’ve been ruminating on your answers ever since — so I wanted to put down in writing what I watched happen, because what you did for each other is the whole reason I’m writing. this letter’s for the eleven of you — but anyone’s welcome to read over your shoulder.

Almost every one of you told me the same thing, without my asking: you got braver by watching each other walk. Not from a coach, not from a class — from whoever went down the runway just before you. One of you said it exactly —

“I didn’t know what was possible until I saw someone else do it.”

— and a few passes later, someone else: “did you see everyone doing more twirls? I can do that too.” By the final walk you were bolder than your first.

It wasn’t only the nerve. One of you, who’s walked the polished high-fashion shows, told me “seeing people model before me relieved a lot of my stress… it calmed me down.” Another: “the rest of the models were so relaxed and confident — that energy kind of passed on to me too.” The room did what no pep talk could. One of you called it a “snowballing effect” — each person being themselves giving the next person permission to be themselves too. And more than once, some version of this: “not every place makes you feel like you belong — but here I feel right at home.” the room did what no pep talk could.

There’s a name for what you did — I studied it back at Stanford.

You got braver by watching each other, and that’s the whole engine of learning in community — you watch, you try, you ask, and someone notices you first. That engine keeps working as long as you keep the community and the space to practice.

At Drex, we call this a Circle — and in partnership with the Fashion XChange team, we’ve created the XChange Models Circle for you all to continue to grow in this craft as a community. Over the next five months, there will be a Silk Runway, hosted by Fashion XChange, every second Friday for you to come practice your craft. Like last time, you’ll walk, answer some reflection questions, and have moments photographed through your practice.

And with all of this material, your Circle creates an issue of a fun & scrappy Zine to capture the magazine-worthy moments from practicing your craft. Each Silk Runway show will have its own issue, and over the six Silk Runway shows you’ll develop a record of who you’re becoming, that you can share with others. We can’t wait to share the first issue with you. for you — a record of who you’re becoming, never a résumé.

Like one of you said on the night, “each time I walked I felt more confident” — so I, along with the Fashion XChange team, invite you to come back, and watch yourself grow issue by issue. Invite others who want to grow in the craft of modeling to the next Silk Runway event, too.

You already have the gift, the nerve, and — as Friday proved — each other. By continuing to show up, you’ll keep going at something you already reached for, in community with others. We hope to see you in two weeks.

Warmly,

Chielo — written in partnership with Fashion XChange.

DREX · XCHANGE

To those in AFRICAAM 263,

I’m grateful for the time we spent together, and thank you to Professor Sam for the opportunity to speak.

Our time together has proven to be a seminal moment in helping drex contextualize our mission to “cultivate people’s gifts” into today’s world. The mission of drex comes from the eternal Good News of Stewardship — a Christian principle which makes known that we’ve all been given unrepeatable and important gifts and talents, and that it is our duty to steward those gifts into the world for the goodness of others. This Good News is perennial. Regardless of the technological innovations, we as humans have continued to be blessed with — and responsible for — the actualization of Stewardship in the world. Even now, in the current technological age of AI. the whole letter turns on this one word: stewardship.

Tracing the history of how humans have become even more essential in the process of labor as technology has evolved lets us see something concretely: when the means of production become cheap, human focus moves upstream — to specifying intent for, and verifying the output of, what is being produced. This concept, first brought to my attention by my friend and co-founder Sue, quickly became intuitive in the very field of manufacturing — one I’m deeply familiar with from my studies at Stanford and my work at Apple and Tesla. upstream — the whole idea, in one word →

The story begins with John Hall, who recognized that more people could make parts well if they focused on the fixturing — so that making a good cut became more intuitive and accessible. What was once expensive to produce, by nature of fewer people being able to make it well, fell in expense. And so the skill that became most valuable was specifying what kind of fixture ought to be used, and what the outcome should look like once machining is done. the skill that survives isn’t the cutting — it’s saying what “good” is.

This lineage of human specification and verification has now evolved into two quintessential practices — GD&T (Geometric Dimensioning & Tolerancing) and SPC (Statistical Process Control) — without which modern manufacturing and assembly would be impossible, and goods would be far less accessible. You hold the proof in your pocket:

In a perfect world, a designer would only communicate intent (specification) and recognize the result (verification), and never worry about how a part gets made (execution). But what we learn from actually producing parts is that it takes many iterative runs to fine-tune both the specification and the system used to get the output — the harness. In manufacturing, the harness is the actual factory; the goal is for parts to be made seamlessly, without constant intervention. When a run fails to meet the spec, the engineers whose job is to refine the harness take progressively deeper looks under the hood, so the next run produces what was intended. the harness = the system you tend, not the thing you make.

When making parts got cheap, mechanical engineers didn’t disappear — they moved their talents upstream, to three disciplines:

• Specification — say what’s worth making. In manufacturing, GD&T: how parts must meet. With AI: name your intent.
• Verification — know it meets your intent. In manufacturing, SPC: proof they match, at scale. With AI: confirm it matches.
• Harness — tend the system that makes it. In manufacturing, the factory, refined each run. With AI: the tools and context you give it.

In the age of AI, the good news of the human’s role is the same. We haven’t become irrelevant — we’ve moved upstream, to the more essential gift we possess: conceptualizing a vision for how to bring our gifts into the world, whether large or small. And we can now draw on the same three disciplines, along with AI — which has made production cheap for almost any action that requires text (letters on a keyboard) — to execute and steward our gifts into the world. same move — new machine.

In our talk on April 29th, this is where I feel I left you — without a framework for how to cultivate your gifts using AI, after having convinced you that your gifts had moved upstream to specifying intent and verifying output. I was very touched by the actionable questions you asked about applying this to your coursework — one of you thinking through what it means for writing essays; another asking what this frame would mean for someone in middle school, still learning what, for example, a “good” essay even looks like. I hope this letter brings it around full circle, with conceptual grounding, and encourages you to be a good steward of all you’ve been given.

With gratitude,

Chielo

DREX · № 1