Java.June.2016

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PHOENIX COLLEGE BRINGS FASHION TO THE FOREGROUND By Jenna Duncan While there certainly is such a thing as natural talent or an “eye” when it comes to fashion, no one makes it far in the industry without a foundation in drawing and constructing garments and a knowledge of standards and practices. For those things, many aspiring designers turn to art schools and fashion design programs. Sylvia Phillips is the department chair overseeing the fashion associate’s degree and certificate programs at Phoenix College. She has been at PC for 31 years and launched the very first courses in clothing construction. This seed blossomed into the popular Fashion Merchandising Associate of Arts degree (AAS) and Fashion Design AAS, and a handful of different certificates. This year, Phoenix College introduced a new certificate for more advanced students in Fashion Entrepreneurship. Phillips designed this new focus with adjunct instructor Naomi Ellis, who has worked for Tommy Hilfiger and Ralph Lauren. The new program is designed for those students who have completed their foundation in clothing construction, illustration and design, who now want to go one step further and start a fashion company, which many do. “We also have another adjunct who was the program director at Texas Tech before she moved here. Now she is teaching fashion design,” Phillips says. Instructor Lori Nam, Ph.D. led the fashion department at Texas Tech from 2004 to 2007. Most of the instructors teaching fashion courses at PC have master’s degrees in the field or related areas. “We can say that our strength is in our adjunct instructors,” Phillips says. “Many of them have industry experience.” Some of the core classes include fashion illustration and computer-assisted design (CAD). At Phoenix College, they focus on construction and patternmaking, some of the essential ingredients. Courses are also offered in decorative arts, hand panting and dyeing textiles, and hand stitching. “We focus a lot on construction skills and patternmaking,” Phillips says. “These are very important skills. Once a student knows how to sketch out a design and make the pattern, they can create an original.” After getting their start studying fashion at Phoenix College, many students move on to bigger-name universities and art programs, such as Parsons, Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in New York City, the San Francisco Art Institute, and Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising (FIDM) in Los Angeles. Recently, one student continued to Baylor on a full-ride scholarship, and others have interned at fashion design houses in New York City. 18 JAVA MAGAZINE
The capstone of the program is a fashion internship. This year Phoenix College students interned at ASU’s Lyric Opera House, Valley Youth Theatre (costume design) and Lillian Lottie (couture wedding dresses), among other community partners. Two interns at Lillian Lottie were offered paid positions. One of Phillips’ favorite success stories is that of designer and innovator Galina Mihaleva, who came to Phoenix College after relocating to the United States from Bulgaria (she already held a master’s degree in the arts). She came to the college mainly to learn English, but became involved in the fashion program and eventually graduated. She began teaching courses at Phoenix College in 1999 and subsequently at Arizona State University. She now teaches at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore most of the year and owns a couture boutique in Scottsdale that she opened in 2007. More recently, Mihaleva completed a Ph.D. from the National Academy of Fine Art. Her specialty is smart textiles—garments that can read information from the human body, measuring things such as heart rate and metabolism; they can even report info to healthcare professionals. For her thesis, she designed a protocol to help scientists and developers of smart textiles communicate with fashion designers. She recently showed new work at a Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Arts gala (SMoCA Mix) and hopes to show her new collection in a gallery exhibit later this year. “We are so lucky to have this program in Phoenix,” Mihaleva says. “I am honored to be a part of Phoenix College.” Another Phoenix College graduate, Jennyvi Dizon, has been featured in many magazines and helped organize Bronx Fashion Week in 2014. She currently runs Jennyvi Couture, her wedding gown company, out of New York City. This year Phoenix College updated its construction lab with 14 new “sewing computers,” at a cost of around $20,000. These are high-tech machines where most of the functions are computer programmable. PC is now offering new online courses, including Developing Your Fashion Business and Apparel Production Management, which teaches new designers important skills such as sourcing fabrics (and how to research sources), how to write assembly specifications and how to design a business plan. JAVA 19 MAGAZINE
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