by Brianna Fisher
When looking back on my time as a fashion merchandising student, there are many experiences that stand out. From our first trip to New York a couple weeks into the semester to the many networking events the program holds, each memory has no doubt left an impact on me. Two memories, though they seemed small at the time, held the largest impact. These memories were two classes I got to experience through my major classes 鈥� Textiles and Visual Merchandising.
Textiles was the second class I ever took in my college career. It is something almost all design and merchandising students start with. The class consists of us learning all the ins and outs of textiles such as understanding fiber content and fibers, yarns, knit vs. woven, and so much more. The most helpful part of the class was making the textile kit. Our textile kit was a large binder which held fabric, fiber, yarn, and finish samples. They were all kept on a form which gave us fiber content and even the types of clothing it may end up in. Being able to not only understand what these tags within my own clothes meant but also reference what something as common as polyester looks like was extremely helpful to have that early into my college experience.
Visual merchandising was a class I did not have until later during my junior year. This felt like the perfect pacing as this was the culmination of everything I had learned prior. One big project we must do in a team is to design a store window within the Stevenson Success Studio. How we decide to do that is completely up to us including bringing in our own clothing to place on the mannequins. Working together with a class I had started at the beginning with, as our whole major tends to stay together, made the experience even more personal. The best part of it all is our window stayed up for a couple weeks while the other group planned their own. So not only did I get to share my vision with the class and my group, I got to share it with the whole school who navigate the school of business on a daily basis. In conclusion, these hands on experiences within the program not only helped reaffirm my decision to join the Fashion Merchandising Program, but they gave me the most needed expertise in the field, increasing my career readiness.