California Apparel News

More than 78 fashion design students graduated from California State University, Long Beach this year, marking a 25 percent rise in program enrollment for the school. While the increase was unprecedented for CSU Long Beach, it was par for the course for many of the state’s design schools, which saw enrollment jump anywhere from 5 percent to 80 percent over the past few years, according to college administrators.

More students are choosing fashion for a myriad of reasons, including the skyrocketing interest in the industry’s glamour, said college administrators. Fashion design programs are also on a growth spurt because of simple demographic realities. More people are going to college, and the business of education has been on the upswing.

But the boom in fashion education has not been in sync with the economy. Employment in Southern California’s apparel industry has been declining for several years. The number of jobs in Southern California’s fashion industry dropped to 59,600 in 2005 from 66,100 in 2004, according to Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp.

While the job loss is part of a long-term trend caused by the movement of volume production overseas, college administrators and professors said they have responded to this economic challenge by increasingly shaping their curriculum around the needs of the industry.

Training for a changed industry

For college professor Terri Faraone and almost every other fashion instructor interviewed for this article, training more students for fewer jobs means one thing: keeping up with the latest in computer technology.

“We have to constantly change. We have to plan and project where things are in the future and meet students’ needs with technology. It has been one of the keys,” said Faraone, program coordinator of fashion merchandising and design at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, Calif., which is 30 miles away from Los Angeles. She estimated her student enrollment has grown 40 percent over the past two years, and she said she recently hired a professor to join her faculty of seven academics.

Last year, Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising kept pace with technological advances by opening a new Design Studio, an educational compound with a computer center, near FIDM’s Los Angeles campus. (See related story above.) FIDM’s student enrollment has steadily grown from 1,922 students in 1995 to more than 5,400 in 2005.

FIDM has also seen an increase in interest in its costume design program, which expanded two years ago to include a new major in film and television costume design.

“There’s a whole synergy between entertainment and fashion,” Bundy said. “We’re reaping the benefits of that.”The increase in costume design study also helps explain the disparity between the rise in design school enrollment and the decline in apparel industry jobs.

Costume designers working in film and television are not always counted among the apparel industry’s employment numbers. If they are employed by an apparel manufacturer that also produces costumes, they are counted as part of the apparel industry workforce. But if they are employed by a film or television studio or a production company, they will be counted among the entertainment industry workforce.

More students, more options

While more people are studying fashion, there are also just more people entering college. The California State Department of Finance projects that enrollment in post-secondary institutions will increase by nearly 28 percent, or 620,952 students, between 2003 and 2013.

Public universities, including those in California’s community college system, have tried to keep pace with the demand for fashion by expanding existing programs. According to Ron Owens, public information officer with the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Offices, since 1997, three California community colleges have started offering fashion programs: West Valley College in Saratoga, Mt. San Antonio in Walnut and Allan Hancock in Santa Maria.

The private sector also has been active in running fashion schools since the technology crash of 2001 caused the business of education to become a good bet, said Sabrina Kay, founder of California Design College in Los Angeles. In 2003, CDC became part of the Art Institute system, which includes 30 college campuses in North America, including four in California.

“Wall Street looked at education as a darling industry because we’re the most predictable,” Kay said. “I’m able to tell you what my revenue is going to be because we can forecast the number of warm bodies in a class.”

While enrollment in most fashion-related majors is up, degrees in product development have shown some of the biggest growth at schools such as FIDM. Enrollment in the product development track has grown more than five percent in the past year, according to Bundy. She said the major focuses on the skills needed to design for private-label manufacturers or vertical retailers such as Bebe Stores Inc.

Balancing creativity with practicality

Once California’s design students graduate, the vast majority of them stay in the state, according to many administrators. Ninety-eight percent of the graduates from California Polytechnic Institute, Pomona’s fashion program look for jobs in Los Angeles or among the surf and skate clothing companies based in Orange County, according to Jean Gipe, the chair of Pomona’s fashion program.

These graduates are better equipped to meet the challenges of the market than their predecessors, said Tammy Chatkin-Newman, senior vice president for 24 Seven, a New York–based recruiting firm for the fashion industry with offices in Santa Monica, Calif.

Chatkin-Newman said 90 percent of the fashion school graduates who come to 24 Seven get placements and retain the company’s services. “The schools do prepare them for what’s going to be out there. They’ve been getting more realistic as to what clients are looking for, like experience with Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator,” she said.

But fashion school has its limits, according to Ilse Metchek, executive director of the California Fashion Association. “Very few of the schools prepare their students for the real business of the business. What you are learning is what the educator knows, or doesn’t know,” she said.

Students can lose sight of the demands of the business world, said Desa Fasiska, a 28-year-old graduate of the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. Fasiska is the owner of the Desanka line, based in Los Angeles.

“When you’re young, design school helps you focus,” Fasiska said. “In school, you can do what you want, and you don’t have to worry about what sells. Once you’re out of school, you have to make money and you can’t do what you want. I’m not sure the curriculum was focused on that when I was in school.”

Enrollment in the Academy of Art’s fashion program has increased from 300 students in 1995 to about 1,000 in 2005, according to Simon Ungless, director of the graduate fashion school.

School directors said professors give practical business advice to the school’s burgeoning student body and the educational program is based in new technology. Still, the school’s mission is to foster creativity in young designers, Ungless said.

“We don’t turn out cookie-cutter designers,” he said. “Our curriculum is flexible. We give them background so they know how things are made. But our focus is on the creative.”

Apparel employers said they take degrees from fashion schools seriously. Jin Seo, men’s design director of Hurley International, said his company hires a combination of industry experience and degrees.

“Someone with a degree has great basic knowledge of classic skills that every designer should know,” Seo said. “But industry knowledge is extremely valuable because you learn as you see, and that knowledge is all tangible.”

Jade Howe, creative director of Howe Denim in Huntington Beach, Calif., said he will only hire people who went to fashion school.

“I’m done hiring people who don’t have fashion degrees,” he said. “A lot of that basic design language is taught to you in schools. When I talk to a designer, we need to speak that same language.”