As a Fashion Industry Essentials student, Cory had ambitions to elevate his custom apparel company and its manufacturing processes. As part of his student success, Cory continues to evolve his customs and restoration company, Fresh Pedestrian.
ON CHOOSING FASHION INDUSTRY ESSENTIALS —
Fashion in its entirety has always been my passion. Taking this course helped me learn about how companies and individual designers run their businesses. The insight will help me better form my strategy and plan of action. Having Parsons a part of the course shocked me, for sure, but intrigued me. I’m always open to taking in information from people who know it and breathing it every day. But the Teen Vogue partnership really inspired me and made me think about the youth and the next generation to come. When you think about teens, you want to create a bright future that withstands the times.
ON BEING A YELLOWBRICK STUDENT —
My favorite part of the course was Angela Gao. Angela had an excellent demonstration for every part of her discussion in this course. I liked the sample creation and the live model of her work. This is generally the type of work I want to be doing. The course itself was head-on and talked about the beginning processes of starting your product from pattern to lab to testing. There’s much more to it than just making a t-shirt business when you want to make good quality garments. I like to work on 1-of-1 pieces, so seeing the transition to mass production showed me new options to look into and helped with my student success.
STUDENT SUCCESS WITH REAL-LIFE APPLICATION —
My biggest takeaway is growing my company by learning the ins and outs of design to product. Every guest speaker and appearance in the videos shared their knowledge of the industry, their own unique style, and what they think is fashionable. This program showed me that there are many runways and plenty of avenues to take to get to where you genuinely want to be.
ON THE PAST & WHAT’S NEXT —
The experience opened me up to different viewpoints and the different ways of looking at the testing and manufacturing stage. It definitely taught me to experiment with my designs, allow room for error when making garments so you can go back and adjust. The courses alone were great activities that I’m going to apply to my own company.
To follow Cory’s journey beyond Fashion Industry Essentials, check out his Instagram.
