Silhouettes Fashion Show

New York, Paris, Milan … Menomonie? The juxtaposition of the small western Wisconsin city with the international capitals of fashion isn’t as unusual as it first appears. Menomonie’s UW-Stout is home to a highly regarded Apparel Design and Development Program, which hones students’ technical and creative skills for jobs with clothing designers and retailers around the world, including some with household names such as Calvin Klein to Ralph Lauren.

“I like to say if you can name a place, we probably have alumni there,” explains Gindy Neidermyer, a UW-Stout professor and director of the program. These include nationally and internationally known brands such as J. Crew, Columbia, and Under Armour as well as Midwestern companies like Kohl’s, Lands’ End, Harley Davidson, and Stormy Kromer.

 “I do think the reputation of the program is highly known in the garment industry,” Neidermyer says.

One could say a certain Midwestern sensibility is woven into UW-Stout’s program. The garments its graduates are creating aren’t impractical examples of haute couture worn by stick-thin runway models; they’re actual pieces of clothing meant to be worn by actual people. “We’re designing products for sale,” Neidermyer emphasizes. “We’re not designing pieces of art.”

The vast majority of graduates from the program are recruited to be technical designers. “What that person really does is manage the concept of that design being mass produced,” Neidermyer says. That means overseeing pattern-making, fit sessions, sourcing materials, and factory manufacturing, as well as quality evaluation and customer satisfaction.

“I really like the problem-solving aspects in a lot of our classes,” says Apparel Design and Development major Daniel Weispfenning. “You have to come up with this design, you come up with a really cool detail, but then you actually have to figure out how to produce that.”

Like many program majors, Weispfenning has taken resume- and skill-building internships (his was at the Adidas headquarters in Germany) and conducted research (into the visibility of colors on safety clothing).

There are currently about 120 students in the program, which produces about 25 to 40 graduates a year. In recent years, the program has boasted a 100 percent job placement rate, with starting salaries average $40,000 annually.

Among recent grads who’ve made their way into the fashion world is 2010 alumnus Laura Zingrone, a senior designer within the runway and collection design department for New York-based designer Michael Kors. Zingrone is enthusiastic about her UW-Stout education, saying it prepared her for the workforce. She singles out the program’s “approach of a technical design emphasis and wearable clothing” makes it unique.

“Many people may be familiar with the design process from inspiration and looking through fashion magazines,” she says. “However, there is a far more complicated process to producing the clothing we wear. UW-Stout emphasizes technical aspects of design, such as flat pattern development, draping, garment construction, textiles, production, and quality analysis in order to create strong, knowledgeable professionals.”

The program’s requirement of an industry internship and its international relationships – Zingrone studied abroad at the London College of Fashion – are extremely valuable, as is the annual Silhouettes fashion show, she adds.
Each spring, the student-run Silhouettes show gives 50 designers – from freshmen through seniors – an opportunity to put their real-life creations on a real-life runway.

To learn more about UW-Stout’s Apparel Design and Development program, visit www.uwstout.edu/programs/bsadd.