California Apparel News

As the 2020 election season entered its final two weeks, the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising saw its fashion-design co-chairs develop a campaign that is aimed at encouraging students to vote. For Nick Verreos and David Paul, the mission to encourage voting originally took shape through the creation of a custom red-carpet knit-jersey draped formal look that featured the word "Vote" written in Swarovski crystals, which was designed for their Nikolaki line.

“Voting is the biggest trend for Fall 2020 and it’s exciting!” Verreos said.

With this fashionable approach to an important issue, Paul mentioned the most-important factor, second only to voting.

"And what’s even more fashionable?," Paul asked. "Verifying that you are registered to vote. The registration deadline in California [was] Monday, October 19th and you can visit vote.org to check the deadlines for all other states and verify registration status.”

Revealing that the school had plans to encourage students to vote, Barbara Bundy, FIDM's vice president of education, noted the significance of promoting this right that pupils should exercise. The recent design efforts used by Verreos and Paul to promote voting aligned with FIDM's interest in reminding its students of the importance of using their votes.

"Since our students are studying online, at home, we wanted a fun way to remind them to vote...and as a college that teaches fashion design, among other subjects, we naturally think it's always ‘in fashion’ to vote. Plus, among our students are those who just turned 18 and are excited to vote for the first time,” Bundy said. “By coincidence, FIDM’s Co-Chairs of Fashion Design, Nick Verreos and David Paul, were inspired by this 'voting season' to design a red-carpet gown, with the word 'Vote' in giant rhinestones across the front. This was created for their red-carpet label, Nikolaki and was initially shown on KTLA TV’s Emmy special. With this inspiration…serendipity entered the vote-campaign thinking at FIDM!”

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