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Seven players added to Tribe’s 40-man roster
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Kent State blown out in second half, loses to Temple 47-13
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Nintendo's Mario endures even as games come and go
By Carol Biliczky
Beacon Journal
Published on Thursday, Apr 24, 2008
When Jessica Engram was a child, she pasted glitter on leaves. Today, she's doing much the same — although the glitter is more likely to be sequins and the leaves to be fabric.
The Shaker Heights senior is one of 24 students who will showcase their designs at Portfolio, the annual design show sponsored by the Shannon Rodgers and Jerry Silverman School of Fashion Design and Merchandising at Kent State University.
The shows today through Saturday mark the silver anniversary for the school, one of only a handful of such programs in the country and one of Kent State's largest undergraduate programs.
With offerings in Florence, Hong Kong and New York City, $3 million in scholarship endowments and more than 1,200 graduates, the fashion school has been a success, said director Elizabeth Rhodes.
''We're a professional school,'' she said. ''We've had a good pipeline. I get a good overall feeling when I sit back and reflect on where we've come.''
For 25 years, the school has offered specialization in design and fashion merchandising. The course work has come to cover a broad range — everything from fashion illustration, machine knitting and pattern-making to computer-aided design, product development and forecasting.
About three quarters of the program's 1,000-plus students are concentrating on merchandising.
That is a good thing, Rhodes said.
''There are more merchandising positions out there and more of them exist within the state of Ohio and Midwest,'' she said. ''In design positions, there's pressure to function in a major metropolitan area. There aren't that many design jobs in Ohio.''
That a fashion design school even came to Kent State was something of an accident — at least in the early days.
In 1979, Rachel Redinger, a Dover resident and founder of the outdoor historical drama Trumpet in the Land near New Philadelphia, proposed giving the theater's Golden Rose Award to Rodgers, a native of Newcomerstown.
In talks with Rodgers and Silverman, she learned that they were grappling with an unusual problem: thousands of precious costumes, some worn by the likes of Benjamin Franklin's common-law wife, Deborah, and Great Britain's Queen Victoria, all languishing in warehouses and their homes.
Silverman had considered giving the collection to the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City, where he was a trustee. But he feared the materials would be lost in the school's vast resources. His partner had thought about giving the collection to a nonprofit organization in his hometown, but the proposal had foundered.
So Redinger, a member of the Chestnut Society women's group at Kent State, suggested they consider donating their collection to the university — an idea that eventually took.
The collection became the bedrock of a fashion museum. The 4,000 garments and accessories, nearly 1,000 pieces of decorative art and a 5,000-volume reference library brought tears to KSU's administrators' eyes, according to Beacon Journal reports. It was considered to be the most valuable gift to Kent State since its founding in 1910, they said at the time.
While the collection of clothes, furniture, jewelry, shoes and even glassware unearthed from an archaeological site officially was valued at $5 million, the real value may well have been millions more, said Ted Curtis, then the KSU architect who oversaw the development of the facilities for the collection. He is now vice president for capital planning and facilities management at the University of Akron.
''Based on what I saw — such as an appraiser picking up one plate and saying that alone would be worth $5,000 — the true value of the collection must have been more like $15 million,'' he suggested.
The moguls, both of them now deceased, also gave more than $150,000 to the university for a fashion and merchandising school that would bear their names. The gift made Kent State the second institution nationwide with a college-level curriculum for fashion careers.
''The sociologist, the economist, the psychologist can learn a great deal by studying fashion,'' Stella Blum, the first curator of the museum, told the Beacon Journal in 1983. ''Fashion is not just a frivolous lightweight concept. It reflects history and human values.''
Growth of institution
Despite the auspicious start, enrollment didn't keep pace with proponents' early and perhaps overly optimistic forecasts.
The school started in 1983 with the transfer of about 200 students from Kent State's School of Family and Consumer Studies.
University officials said they expected the number of majors to reach 400 to 500 by 1987. Yet by 1994, enrollment was only around 300.
The proposed location for the museum and school — the stately Rockwell Hall, one of the oldest buildings on campus — also met with resistance.
Twice the Faculty Senate voted against moving university administrators, who then were housed at Rockwell, into the library on the other side of campus, viewing it as an encroachment on the library's research and study space.
But Kent State officials did not let that stop them from spending almost $5 million in state money to renovate Rockwell and move the administrators to the library. The museum opened in 1983; the school's new facilities opened in 1990.
Since then, the museum has acquired many other donations — garments by Oscar de la Renta, a collection of American glass from Akron antique collectors Jabe Tarter and Paul Miller, and a pottery collection from one-time fitness guru Paige Palmer, among others.
And the school has grown — it is now five times larger than it was when it started in 1983.
Now the goals are to attract more students from beyond the Midwest, to develop a graduate program and to entice more men and minorities into the field.
''We are very white and very female,'' Rhodes said.
Fashion shows
In the meantime, the school's merchandising students are putting the finishing touches on the choreography, music and lighting for the three fashion shows that begin tonight. Student volunteers will model three outfits made by each of 24 junior and senior design majors in a show that will harken to runway shows in Milan, New York and Paris.
Students began to work on the designs last summer by developing drawings for 100 garments. Those were critiqued and eventually pared down to three workable products.
They polished their work through the months and adapted the final garments to the bodies of their models.
Engram's ''line'' will be three drapey garments in navy, beige and brown neutrals — a jacket and gown; jacket, pants and two T-shirts that are worn as a set; and a blouse and high-waisted pencil skirt with a rope belt.
''The most difficult part of designing clothes is being realistic,'' she said. ''You'll have these ideas and they'll look great on paper, but transferring them to the dress form could look completely different from what you've drawn.''
Engram may eventually strike out on her own, but for now, she would like to work for a top designer after she graduates in August.
''You can't possibly learn everything you need to know in just four years,'' she said.
Kent State's Portfolio shows
Tonight - 6 and 8 p.m., for Kent State students only.
Friday - 6 p.m., VIP show. Sold out.
Saturday - 6 and 8 p.m., for the general public. Tickets are $65 each.
Tickets can be purchased at the Fashion School in Rockwell Hall, the Kent Student Center or by calling 330-672-0194. All proceeds go to the Shannon Rodgers and Jerry Silverman School of Fashion Design and Merchandising.
Carol Biliczky can be reached at 330-996-3729 or cbiliczky@thebeaconjournal.com.
When Jessica Engram was a child, she pasted glitter on leaves. Today, she's doing much the same — although the glitter is more likely to be sequins and the leaves to be fabric.
Get the full article here.
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