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| Photo of Iris Apfel by Roger Davies for Architectural Digest |
Fourteen textile and apparel students (seven students from our Apparel Design program and seven from our Retail Merchandising program) have returned to Austin having spent the month of May in New York City.
Their mission? Pass through the design crucible--students have three weeks to produce all of the deliverables associated with product development. The challenge? The products and services they are working on do not exist, at least not yet. Students will invent a fictional product or service related to a randomly drawn theme. When the deadline arrives, students must be prepared to present a retail space plan, product color story, marketing materials--including a complete marketing strategy, and an implementable business plan .
When not working on their projects, students were learning all they could about New York's retail and design coterie. Students shadowed Ms. Apfel and met her personal business contacts, some of the most influential people in the worlds of apparel and retail.
Back in Austin, the students will finalize their projects. The experience culminates with the students’ presentation of their business plans. Ms. Apfel will be in Austin to hear the students’ presentations (it is, at this point, that Ms. Apfel truly becomes the ‘visiting’ in visiting professor) and offer her critique.
"'Taste you can learn,'” Iris Barrel Apfel pronounces, peering over the black frames of her trademark oversize glasses. 'But style is like charisma. You know it when you see it.'” Amanda Vaill of Architectural Digest discovers how Apfel, a copy girl from Women's Wear Daily became a style icon.
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