This month Island Pacific Academy junior, Rachel Novak, will begin study for her career in fashion. She is one of 100 people chosen from applicants around the world to take part in “Fashion Essentials” an online Parsons School of Design and Teen Vogue program.
Exterior of Parson’s The New School for Design in New York City. (Photo courtesy: R. Novak)
Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of Vogue, is one of the heads of the program. “I am always so encouraged by the number of young people I meet who express an interest in pursuing a career in fashion. Among them are the next Alexander Wang, Rag & Bone, and Tory Burch–this program will give students the real-world knowledge and training to be successful,” says Wintour on the website about the course.
Rachel Novak (’17)
“I can’t wait to get started,” says Novak who met the minimum age requirement of 16 in time to send in an application this summer. “The program is going to help me prepare a good portfolio for college,” she says. Already Novak has been doing assigned readings and will begin to submit drawings once the course begins. “I will be doing what is called ‘trend forecasting’ in a way predicting and perhaps influencing what will be the next ‘in’ thing in fashion.”
Novak channeled her passion for fashion into her tenth grade personal project last year. This International Baccalaureate (IB) Middle Years Programme (MYP) culminating project mirrors and builds upon the concepts of the Primary Years Programme (PYP) grade five Exhibition project.
For the PYP project, students select a real-life issue or problem, do in-depth collaborative research, and share their results with the community. Then, five years later, IB students once again have an opportunity to select a topic of interest. They are asked to work over a period of time demonstrating organization, research, planning and growth as a learner. Each student submits a final project along with a reflection of what they learned in completing the assignment.
“For my project I wanted to make a dress without a pattern,” Novak explains. “Mrs. Bradley was my mentor and she put me in touch with her cousin, who works in the fashion industry.” Bradley’s cousin is Adam van Eeckhout, Assistant to the Creative Director at Naeem Khan. “I knew he did something with fashion, but honestly I had no idea exactly what,” admits Bradley, IPA’s MYP coordinator and Science department chair. “I was so happy to help connect her (Novak) with a professional in the career path she hopes to pursue.”
For Novak, who dreams of being a creative designer and already relishes designing elegant gowns, the match up with van Eeckhout was perfect.
Adam van Eeckhout and Rachel Novak in a Naeem Khan showroom in New York City. (Photo courtesy: R. Novak)
Adam “I emailed him (van Eeckhout) for advice during my personal project. He was so down to earth, so genuinely nice. He ended up inviting me and my mom to visit the Naeem Khan fashion house in New York during spring break that year,” says Novak. “The working designs I saw there in April I got to see again during a summer trip. But by July, the sketched designs were racks and racks of actual gowns. It was amazing.”
Novak’s online class offered by The New School (Parson’s School of Design) will cover visual style, media, and production. Over 40 hours of coursework will give her insight into the competitive world of the fashion industry. She will receive a certificate of completion at the end of the class.
What’s next for Novak? She already has a summer job lined up for 2016: an internship in New York City with van Eeckhout at Naeem Khan.
