Note – this started out as an article whose purpose 
was to talk about Condé Nast’s new school for fashion addicts… and turned into a thought-recap of the last 6 years of my life: from fashion merchandising student to marketing maven.
If you are more interested in the Condé Nast fashion programs… here are a few articles you can read (I completely understand):
An important fact about the LONDON based school: While Condé Nast‘s initial plans do not say degrees will be awarded for the year-long programs, talks are underway regarding affiliations with other universities. Course topics: the history of fashion and design and related journalism and business skills.
and here is the bit I told you resulted in me trying to write a blog post….
I’ve been thinking on and off for the past few months (okay, maybe since my second semester of freshmen year at Columbia College Chicago as a fashion major) about what it would have been like if I’d have went to a real deal fashion school like Parson’s, FIT, FIDM or even Central Saint Martins. I’d chosen not to apply to these schools because I had a heart set on Chicago – a city I had grown to love more and more each time I went to visit my dad – and State street shopping (I know, kind of sad that in an entire city that holds such amazing shops as Michigan avenue and an unlimited amount of charming boutiques in Chicago’s many, many neighborhoods… State street is where dad would take me; hello daughter of a construction worker).
Anyways, now that I am out of college and have been for over 8 months – I am starting to wonder WHAT WAS I THINKING? Not in a completely negative sense, just in a very brain-filled-with-thoughts-for-hours-on-end kind of way:
What would it be like if I went abroad?
Or, what would it have been like if I had taken the trip to NYC, lived in a hole in the wall with a random off the street and started from square one… working anywhere to meet just one person who could help me into my first fashion related volunteer opportunity/internship/retail job/real job?!
Or, what would be like if I’d not have changed my major from fashion merchandising to marketing (we didn’t exactly have a fashion marketing/fashion business major so this was my next best bet).
Truthfully, I should have went abroad. Even if it hadn’t been for fashion. I had almost 100% taken the jump to teach English in China but that dream was swiftly pulled once I took a Chinese course and realized if I went I might a) return in a split second or b) stay year after year after year and not return -and not see my family whom I became a lot more attached to once I left my high school PITA days behind. I also considered taking the money I had saved up (and not used to pay off some of my ugly student loans) to travel to many places (hosteling or staying with families of friends for certain lengths of time) but somewhere I checked that off the list too.
The positive: I’m glad I went the marketing route. I’m overly obsessed with mashable.com, brandchannel.com, and virtually any site with writer’s that care about and discuss what is working for companies (in any industry) and what is not working; reading case studies and uncovering my own case studies by comparing what certain organizations have done over time; and looking at what the billions of fashion brands are attempting (and exceeding expectations) with digital. Obsessed.
Hmm, let’s see. The purpose of this article was to express my extreme yearn to be one of the 300 applicants (where can one even apply?) to Condé Nast’s new fashion and design college. I really expected that with my severely advanced google-ing abilities I would have figured it out by now, but blimey – looks like it’s not time to stumble upon it yet.
*Photo source: cluster8
