Women Campus | Hello beautiful!: Seeing Stars (and Polka Dots and Stripes and more): Pattern Design and Stylesight's International Student Print and Graphics Competition

There’s a world beyond clothes when it comes to fashion. We all love a Diane Von Furstenberg wrap dress or Tibi skirt in a bold print, but did you ever think of where those prints came from? Sometimes designers themselves create them, it’s true, but other times they work with designers trained specifically in pattern design. Just as with fashion design, you can get a degree in pattern design and end up working for a major fashion label or a place like Stylesight. Stylesight is one of the fashion industry’s leading trend forecasters, surveying the globe for what’s new and hot in the fashion world and informing their clients in the fashion industry (be it merchandising, design, editorial or what have you) of those trends. Because Stylesight loves what’s fresh, the company decided to create a seasonal international competition (following fashion’s fall and spring seasons) to find new talent in pattern design. Now in its sixth season, the competition recently announced its latest winners, all college students from across the globe.

According to Stylesight, students are asked to “create a series of exclusive prints and graphics” to be judged by Stylesight’s Senior Vice President of Forecasting, Isham Sardouk, and a team of experts from the fashion and design industries on “the quality of work, the level of creativity, cohesiveness and flawless execution.” Consistent with the season, students’ work this time around reflected the muted, pastel tones of spring—sweet mauves, lilacs, sky blues, and more—with rich graphic details blending the elegance of nature with the sharpness of geometry.

This year, winners came from three of the world’s design schools—Willem de Kooning Academie Holland in The Netherlands, University of Central Lancashire in the United Kingdom, and Philadelphia University in our own United States. The first place winners from each of the schools, winning a $1000 prize, were: Lotte Groeneveld from Willem de Kooning Academie, who designed a nature-inspired pattern collection in shades of pink, grey, orange, and blue; Carla Little from the University of Central Lancashire, whose collection set a regal tone, with shades of blue, black, and pink blended together to form crests; and Soo Kyung Joung from Philadelphia University, who used purples, pinks, and greys in her floral pattern collection.

Second place winners Mirlotte Huisman from Willem de Kooning Academie, Nazia Akhtar from the University of Central Lancashire, and Arpita Kohli from Philadelphia University all won internships with Stylesight’s Paris or New York offices.

As fabulous as this is for the girls, you might be wondering, what goes into pattern design, anyway? It’s not just a bunch of drawing on fabric, for sure. At Philadelphia University, where two of Stylesight’s competition awardees came from, students go through an intensive program of study which takes them into all of the business and creative aspects of pattern design.

What’s interesting about Philadelphia University is that it was founded in 1884 as the Philadelphia Textile School, “to educate America’s textile workers and managers.” Philadelphia University maintains this educational mission today, and though now the university is made up of much more than textiles—there’s also the standard university schools for science, architecture, liberal arts, and so on—it still has the School for Engineering and Textiles, of which the Textile Design major is a part.

Within the Textile Design major, students study drawing, design, and art history foundations, of course, but they also study chemistry, knitting, weaving, dyeing, and textile history and business. Courses like these help students “develop a sense of color, light, shape, texture and form,” according to the university’s textile design department. Students also “explore properties of fibers, yarns and dyes, and study the ways that fabrics are constructed. Advanced courses allow students to concentrate in a breadth of fabrication technology, including woven, knit, and printed textiles.”

It’s these kinds of things that the winners of the Spring/Summer 2011 Stylesight International Student Print and Graphics Competition do on a daily basis. They create patterns based on things that inspire them, and put their own spin on it, just as any artist does. For example, some of the winners from the Stylesight competition were inspired by Spirographs, vintage floral wallpaper, chandeliers, foxhunting attire, and Roman numerals, just to name a few.

Sometimes people forget that, like any graphic designer or painter, a textile designer is an artist, and their role is just as integral to the fashion world as the fashion designer. It’s girls like these who have gotten a leg up in the Stylesight International Student Print and Graphics Competition whose prints you might even be wearing one day.

If you’re interested in becoming a textile designer yourself, here are some schools (among many others) that offer degrees in Textiles, Textile Design or similar fields, according to the Textile Society of America:

California College of the Arts: Textiles

Cornell University: Fiber Science and Apparel Design

Fashion Institute of Technology: Textile and Surface Design

North Carolina State University: Many different majors within the College of Textiles, including Textile Design

Rhode Island School of Design: Textiles

University of Nebraska at Lincoln: Textile and Apparel Design, among many other degree selections

And if you’re wondering about some careers a Textile Design major might have, check these out!

Textile Designer (of course)

Graphic Designer

Fiber Artist

Fashion Designer

Merchandise Buyer (Stores, boutiques, and the like)