FIDM Fashion Club is delighted to welcome one of our newest international clubs! We recently caught up with co-president Catherine Shi from Stellart International School of Arts in Guangdong, China.
How did you learn about FIDM and the FIDM Fashion Club? We got to know FIDM through our advisor, Sylvia, who is the fashion management and communication teacher in our school. Since she received her degree in the States, she is familiar with FIDM. During the summer, a Representative for FIDM in China, Jojo, contacted our school’s external relationship department, Angela Li and Sylvia Li. They helped us a lot in organizing our structure and provided us with many resources. After researching the FIDM Fashion Club program, we felt it was what our school needed. Under the guidance from Sylvia and a College Representative for FIDM in California, Kelly Pudgil, we registered our club.
What plans/activities does your club have for this school year? We have students specializing in different areas of the fashion industry, including design, fashion communications, styling, textiles, and management. Before the launch of the club, we also held the first fashion show in one of the biggest education forums in China, the Aesthetic Education Forum. We are confident that this year we will offer a more stunning, outstanding show in order to promote our club, Antares. We have several events planned for this year, including our recent Halloween makeup and bakery fundraising booth. We also hosted a mini-runway contest in our dorm. For Christmas, we will be the vendor for our school’s flea market. In addition to these activities, our advisor, Sylvia, and two other teachers offer fashion related courses and workshops, such as trend-forecasting, graphic design, and an introduction to textile manipulation. We found that many students from other areas of study are attracted to our diverse activities and creative content. It is fortunate that FIDM has offered us the opportunity to create the fashion club this year, so that we can bring together other fashion-loving students from our school. This will provide a platform for inter-disciplinary communication within our school, and fashion can be presented in various forms on campus.
What advice would you give someone interested in starting a FIDM Fashion Club at their school? From my point of view, the primary thing is to gather a group of students who have a passion for fashion. A lot of formalities and regulations come in second place. In our club, we not only offer fashion related activities; we try to create a fashionable atmosphere among the school, so that students on campus can feel the positive attitude we‘re trying to spread. We believe that fashion is not only about the clothes; it’s about the music, models, and makeup. The mutual assistance of all departments help to make the operation of our club run smoothly.
What are some goals you have set for your club this year? We wish to implement fashion into our daily lives and to make people around us aware of the diversity in the field of fashion. We want to achieve this goal through the activities we organize. For example, we have an annual fashion show to demonstrate to parents and teachers what we have accomplished throughout the year. We will carry out charity sales in the future, in which half of the profits we earn will be used for club funding, and the other half will be used to support charity programs or fashion related activities in the community.
We also want to teach people more about fashion skills through the club activities. Our three advisors are in charge of graphic design, clothing design, and fashion management. Each week, we have different free courses in our club for students who want to learn new skills. We are currently organizing several workshops and presentations, including a few basic classes such as sewing and pattern making.
Additionally, we plan to gain a certain number of followers on social media. We want to post every event that we organize as well as some of our daily activities. We hope what we are doing will resonate with more people and encourage them to start their own fashion club.
Anything else you’d like to share with us? We wish to make our club self-sufficient, independent, and to be a positive influence in society. We have a lot of goals we want to achieve, but we need additional funding to do so. We also want to contribute to many charity and fashion related events in the community. This is our original intention for starting our fashion club—to influence more people using fashion to spread goodness and inclusiveness.
