Welcome to the website for students taking classes on fashion at Vanderbilt University!

In this website, we will collect the activities shared and the final projects realized by the students enrolled in two iSeminars in Spring 2020: “Made-in-Italy: Identities, Cultures, and Globalization in Italian Fashion and Design” and “Fashion Sustainability: Local to Global Practices and Possibilities.”

In “Made-in-Italy: Identities, Cultures, and Globalization in Italian Fashion and Design,” through activities and the final projects we will examine how the global market makes Italian fashion and design available to foreign consumers and tailors it according to their immediate users. We will investigate how iconic designs and brands contributed to the current plethora of goods from Italy and how they project the Italian quality mark on a global framework. Moreover, we will study why and how a fashion brand may spread over national boundaries in order to understand the multifaceted interplay among local and transnational communities and the changing reality of a globalized culture. Finally, we will focus on the role of sustainable fashion both locally and globally.

In “Fashion Sustainability: Local to Global Practices and Possibilities,” we will define and explore fashion production and retail from the local to global level through the lens of sustainable practice. Field trips to local businesses will help to crystallize the subject matter. We will utilize design thinking in order to conceptualize and develop sustainable fashion design projects and activities for the Vanderbilt campus and beyond.