Flipping through a magazine one day, a young college student suddenly stops at an ad for flatware. Wires, delicately wrapped around the utensils’ stems, showcase colored jewels. The student, Tera Wegner of Barrington, clips the ad and tucks the idea into the back of her mind.
That flatware soon becomes the inspiration for a class assignment, her own design she will call “Pearl Gem.” Not only will this creation be sexy, silvery and stunning, it also will take first prize among all U.S. entrants in the 1996 International Young Fashion Designers Contest in Paris and bring Wegner 20,000 francs, or about $3,500. We’re talking the Louvre and judges with lofty names like Pierre Cardin and Paco Rabanne.
Not a bad way to launch a career in the competitive fashion design industry.
Wegner is a student at Harper College in Palatine, which, although it’s a community college, has a fashion department that is no slouch when it comes to feathers in the cap.
Masa Kitani, a student from Des Plaines, also submitted her creation “She’s Making Me Dizzy” to the Paris competition and emerged a finalist, as did McHenry resident Jessie Allbritton, also a Harper student. In an annual competition sponsored by Fashion Group International of Chicago, classmate Chung Shim of Schaumburg earned a first-place award and the grand prize for her eveningwear design. And then there is Regan Adair of Mundelein, whose outerwear design won the 1996 national Bacardi Limon Breakthrough Fashion Design Search with Cynthia Rowley, a Barrington native. The hard-earned, resume-enhancing awards included generous dollops of cash, internships and international study trips.
So what’s the secret to bagging all these awards?
“The students from Harper College who have won the Fashion Group awards have been exceptional entrants,” said Susan Glick, fashion director of the Chicago Apparel Center and producer of the Fashion Group competition. “The workmanship is excellent, the creativity is directional and they also seem to have a common denominator, which is that these are clothes people will want to buy. If that’s what the Harper program is doing, I applaud them.”
A graduate of Harper College and the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, Rachel McAlpin is enjoying success in the industry. She creates women’s sportswear designs for boutiques in Chicago and New York City and designs patterns for several brands of internationally known children’s sportswear. She also recently designed a line of clothing for a Chinese manufacturer.
Commenting on her experience at Harper, McAlpin said: “Because the classes are small, one-on-one instruction is possible. I loved having the opportunity to compete in national and international contests. Vocational education offers a variety of learning styles and maximizes the strengths of the individual. The education I gained at Harper College and the confidence it gave me have been very important to my career success in the fashion industry.”
Sandra Clark, associate professor and department chair of the Harper fashion program’s dual tracks–design and merchandising–attributes the seamless success to several things. “Every one of our faculty members has their own expertise, and we strictly adhere to the expertise format when we teach a class,” she said. “In other words, I don’t teach pattern making, I don’t teach basic apparel design, because I’m not a pattern maker. But someone who actually works as a pattern maker teaches that aspect. I’m an expert in surface design–fabric painting and sculpture for the body. We will not cross the boundaries.”
Absently tugging at a swath of Indian fabric she had found in New York, handpainted with dyes and draped with casual elegance about her neck, Clark adds that the Harper difference is also due to faculty longevity, commitment and mutual respect.
So how in the world do award-winning ideas originate? For the Harper students, it’s a push from the instructors along with unmistakable talent.
“My idea was from watching `Brady Bunch,’ ” Adair said, “specifically the Hawaii episodes where flowers were big. Also, my grandma was in the process of redecorating her home. One thing stood out: The tub in her bathroom upstairs had those old decal flowers for traction. My idea really took off from that. I wanted something similar to the flowers, down to the texture. I handmade applique flowers from ultrasuede–pink, red, lime green. To bring them into a three-dimensional format, I constructed them as if they were blooming off the actual garment.” Adair’s winning design is a pantsuit and a short pants outfit with a long coat.
Wegner said she spotted the flatware ad and had thought to herself, ” `Well, isn’t this cool?’ I wanted to do a garment using this (flatware) technique, with wires, metals, pearl beads and crystal beads, and I gave it a lot of thought. I came up with a preliminary illustration of what I wanted to do, and then, through trial and error, it just took on the shape it finally turned out to be.” The skirt and bodice are constructed of woven mesh, overlayed with individually applied pearls and crystal beads. Pearl-tipped wires extending from the sides of the skirt create a sculptured look.
Kitani’s design, a fanciful confection all done in purple loops, began in Clark’s Fashion Basics class. “She wanted us to do something in the round,” Kitani said. “So I pretty much made my own fabric. I took elastic, layered it just a bit and zigzag stitched it. I took boning and interwove it and just did circles. I thought, `If this woman wants circles, I’ll give her circles.’ . . . I never thought it would get an award!”
Shim’s thinking took an altogether different path. “Our assignment was to make a kimono jacket without sewing,” she said. “I always liked leather, so I thought, `What if I use leather?’ I got the inspiration from this magazine, American Crafts, this woven bamboo basket. I thought maybe I could weave this in leather, in a khaki color, with safety pins.” Her woven leather jacket, held together with tiny gold safety pins, tops a hand-dyed silk chemise dress.
The Harper fashion department consists of about 10 faculty members and 200 full- and part-time students per semester. Its first students left the nest in 1969, two years after the college opened. Today, about 35 percent of the students are out-of-district, about 30 percent are adults who are returning to school, and a very small percentage are men. Students earn two-year associate degrees in fashion design or fashion merchandising, with some grads going directly to work and other going on to four-year schools before hitting the runways and retailers. (There’s also a certificate in fashion design that doesn’t include general education requirements.)
A resource room houses what may be the best wardrobe in the northwest suburbs. Racks and closets overflow with spectacular gowns donated by the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York and dating to the 1950s.
Clark offers a definition of fashion design as “the harmony of elements and principles all put together to make a unified composition.” And good design, she explained, is judged by whether it has a good flow, rhythm, focal point and uniqueness, as opposed to commonality.
“In the case of a student, they will have a nucleus of a design,” Clark said. “Not every element will be ready to be translated, but there’ll be some nucleus of creativity that we can see, and then we’ll help them refine and refine and refine.”
Now, this is all abstract stuff, hard for the uninitiated to understand. Clark offers some help. “We are definitely not a home economics or sewing program in any way,” she said, “and we expect the students to come in with a concept of sewing already.”
The design track focuses on apparel design, flat pattern design, draping, illustration and tailoring. Pattern design and draping, for example, take students through four levels throughout their two years of study. You start with slopers, which are flat paper pieces, move up to muslin patterns draped on dress forms and finally arrive at the fabric stage.
Illustration is not taught, for the most part, as an end in itself, but as a visual communication tool. “We’re not trying to make pretty pictures, necessarily,” Clark explained. “What we’re trying to do is take the ideas we have in our head and communicate them on paper. From that, we can refine it, translate it into actuality easier.”
Tailoring, Clark said, is not good sewing but part of the design process. It involves couture techniques such as Hong Kong finishes, where seams look as finished inside as outside, and buttonhole welting, which uses extra fabric insets for a flatter, finished look.
All of this takes place in two rooms fully stocked with tools of the trade, and only the best will do to help smooth the transition into the real world. Dress forms are continually updated to reflect the latest proportions. There are expansive tables, perfect for flinging bolts of fabric onto with creative abandon. Industrial-strength irons and sewing machines. Wooden looms. Swatches of this and that. Dogeared fashion magazines.
None of this is done in a vacuum. There are frequent field trips to art galleries, career seminars, the Apparel Center, manufacturers and retailers. New York and Paris are not too distant for this group, and supplemental funds are made available. Buyers and designers regularly breeze in to share their insights.
And then there are the fashion shows. Hot lights. Runways. Nerves, pressure. It’s theatrical, it’s cutting-edge.
If all this sounds like fun, think again. “We are tough,” Clark said. “There’s no question about it. We’re not there cracking the whip; we’re there working side-by-side with them, but we expect excellence. And we don’t take no for an answer.” Of the frequent classroom critiques of work-in-progress, Clark said the student peer judges are “not as tough on one another as their instructors are on them. I think they’re more sensitive to each others’ perils.”
Glamorous and glitzy, the high-stakes world of fashion design shows us things that alternately fascinate, appall and confuse.
“People get annoyed by crazy designs on the runway,” Wegner said, “but it’s an opportunity for designers to show their creativity and to stretch the boundaries.”
“Plus,” Kitani added, continuing the fashion statement, “I think it’s like sculpture for the body. People forget fashion is art because it’s so commonly worn.”
Speaking as a merchant as well as a student, Shim, owner of Shimi’s Boutique in Chicago, always looks for what will sell. “Crazy designs don’t sell, so the things I carry are more conservative, unique but usable, a lot of neutrals,” she said.
Adair offers another perspective. “I really see a change coming about,” he said. “New looks, more in-depth looks. The industry has been presenting modern, simple looks. I see more promise in diversity–unusual, avant-garde, fantasy.”
Because it can offer so much career satisfaction, and because there is no shortage of newcomers, the multibillion-dollar fashion industry is nothing short of competitive. Cutthroat? Catty? Pick your word.
Pam Iannotta, regional director of the Fashion Group International of Chicago, cautioned that it’s not necessarily easy to win the Fashion Group competition. “We do have students come to us teary-eyed, having won other competitions and not this one,” she said. “If you’re going to be in the real world, your garments have to stack up. Things are tough out there.”
Iannotta offers this assessment of students from Harper: “Their creativity is excellent. Their use of fabrics. They create beautifully done, innovative garments that are considered salable and wearable. Because if you are going to be a designer, you need to have garments that are not only good-looking but also salable. It’s one thing to create off-the-wall garments, but you’re not going to live or eat as a designer.”
But the Harper students, too, are tough. According to Wegner, “It hasn’t scared me away because you just have to believe in yourself and what you do. That’s really all there is to it. That’s why we’re all here, because we just feel it.”
“The Harper program helped me in a lot of ways,” Adair said. “It gives you what you need to get ahead in the industry. It’s very important that you know how to execute patterns–many schools don’t teach that. At Harper, they teach you from the bottom up. That’s vital.”
Clark, the department chair, added: “I think these students, and all those who preceded them, deserve recognition. This is a community college, so it doesn’t get the recognition it deserves, and we’ve been winning for 20 years. We’re really grateful because these kids have worked like dogs to build up this reputation.”
Adair, for one, has put his graduation cap and gown on hold to take advantage of a part of his prize: an internship with New York designer Rowley.
To reduce costs and capitalize on her talent, Shim, who plans to graduate in 1998, intends to manufacture her own clothing line to offer in her boutique.
For Wegner, also set to graduate in 1998, her goal is “to make a statement on the runway.” For now, she is concentrating on the present, but may attend another school and plans to open a boutique showcasing her designs.
As for Kitani, she is busy immersing herself in a broad spectrum of art training and plans to graduate from Harper in about two years. After that, she has her sights set on further schooling, possibly in Europe. Ultimately, her goal is to be a fashion designer.
Regan Adair. Chung Shim. Masa Kitani. Tera Wegner. Remember these names. You may be wearing them someday.
FICKLE FASHION
Although it’s not rocket science, the very existence of fashion–and the demand for fashion designers–is still a somewhat debatable subject and a mystery. The concept of clothes started either with the fig leaves or in the caves, depending on your perspective. But fashion is quite another thing, having arrived on the scene only during the late Middle Ages.
Why, indeed, do people follow it? What makes a particular fashion catch on big? Young people often use fashion as a means of differentiating themselves from older folks. Depending on the degree of this differentiation, it may be a rebellion thing. And once the adults begin adopting the new look, as so often happens, kids drop it like a hot iron.
The World Book encyclopedia tells us that “one of the first true fashions appeared among young Italian men during the Renaissance (1300-1600). While their elders dressed in long traditional robes, young Italian males began wearing tights and short, close-fitting jackets called doublets. German soldiers set another early fashion when they slashed their luxurious silk clothes with knives to reveal another colorful garment underneath.” Daring, shock-value stuff back then too, no doubt.
Fashion, historically, has also been a class thing. A way to differentiate, again, but for different reasons. Pre-1800 sumptuary laws forbade many people to spend more than the prescribed amount on luxuries such as fashions. It was a way to keep the peasants in line, make sure they didn’t get any funny ideas. “In some countries,” the World Book reports, “only the ruling class could legally wear silk, fur and the colors red and purple.”
Just as it changed about every other aspect of people’s lives, the Industrial Revolution took a major swipe at the fashion world as well, with mass production making everything more affordable and accessible.
Today, the industry is divided into couture and ready-to-wear. So division and differentiation are as strong as ever in the fashion world; they just take on different forms.
GETTING UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL
Want to see some of the Harper College students’ designs in person? Plan to attend Harper’s Bizarre Gallery of Fashion on May 2.
The showcase of fashions designed and made by students is at 1 and 8 p.m. at Harper College, Building M, 1200 W. Algonquin Rd., Palatine.
Tickets are $8.50 and are available through the Harper College Theatre box office. For more information, call 847-925-6421.
