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PARKER BLACKBURN GLD E-PORTFOLIO

Cultivating a Community of Creatives

About

ABOUT ME

Hello! My name is Parker Paige Blackburn, I am a Mass Communications major and a Fashion Merchandising minor specializing in creative direction, visual communication, journalism, and public relations at the University of South Carolina, graduating in May 2022. 

Ever since I was in the seventh grade, I have known that I wanted to work in the fashion industry. It was that school year when twelve-year-old Parker made a pact with herself that she would not repeat an outfit in 2012. I would take the same few pieces of clothing and see how many combinations I could come up with, making every day a new challenge. I would wear garments upside down, inside out, and even backward. Not to mention I spent my free time playing London Tipton’s Suite Styler, Hannah Montana’s rock star challenge, and watching hours of early influencer era YouTube videos. I did not know it at the time, but I was planting seeds in my garden full of inspirations, goals, and future opportunities that would lead me to my dream job, fashion styling.

I am the current Style Director for the Garnet & Black Magazine, University of South Carolina's student-led bi-annual publication under Garnet Media Group. My role includes curating shoot concepts and themes, networking with local retailers and artists to pull clothing and accessories, finding and managing models and talent, as well as working with the creative director, art director, and photo editor to plan and coordinate our style shoots on a bi-weekly production schedule. 

The purpose of the Garnet & Black Magazine is to provide new information and perspectives to the University of South Carolina community while putting the stories and voices of its underserved and underrepresented members at our forefront. In my two years as style director on staff, I can proudly say we have fulfilled that mission with all fifty style stories published.

 

I am pursuing the professional and civic engagement graduation with leadership distinction pathway. My key insights are centered around the three main components of the mass communications major: visual communications, journalism, and public relations. Combining the knowledge from my studies with the internship and abroad experiences I received at UofSC, I can proudly say the Garnet & Black Style team is now a place where we use clothing and elevated concepts to challenge the status quo about what style editorial can be, what true style represents, and challenge the idea of elitist fashion. I have seen this play out through the expansive growth of our style team.

 

 Using the seeds planted around me, from various professors, internship advisors, and peers, I was able to pour that knowledge back into the magazine and cultivate a group of fifteen talented individuals who are all pursuing their dreams of working in the fashion media industry. In return, my team provided me with the unexpected benefit of true collaboration and allowed me to gain confidence in myself and blossom in my field.

 

In this presentation, I will discuss how I effectively used my resources within and beyond the classroom to gain insights on how to build and lead a successful team, how to collaborate and communicate across the globe during a pandemic, and how to promote and generate interest for a so-called “dying” medium.

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USING PLANTED SEEDS TO GROW A GARDEN 

KEY INSIGHT 1: Learning how to effectively use resources. 

Since I was in the seventh grade, I have known that I wanted to work in the fashion industry. When twelve-year-old Parker made a pact with herself that school year, she would not repeat an outfit in 2012. I would take the same few pieces of clothing and see how many combinations I could come up with, making every day a new challenge. I would wear garments upside down, inside out, and even backward. Not to mention I spent my free time playing London Tipton’s Suite Styler, Hannah Montana’s rock star challenge, and watching hours of early influencer era YouTube videos. I did not know it at the time, but I was planting seeds in my garden full of inspirations, goals, and future opportunities that would lead me to my dream job, fashion styling.

This passion created a pathway to my first job at fifteen years old, a prom dress shop called The Edge. After three years of styling shopping windows and helping, clients find their dream dresses, I was asked to become a dress buyer and attend their annual market event in Atlanta. It was there that I met Project Runway Allstar designer Johnathan Kayne. Although my seeds were already planted through high school connections, it was my knowledge of Adobe and color theory that I learned in my freshman year Principals of Visual Communications class, as well as my 1st-year experience on the Garnet & Black Style Team, that secured my summer 2019 internship spot at Johnathan Kayne LLC in Nashville, Tennessee. My first taste of professional styling experience left me wanting more. From creating inspiration boards for Johnathan’s newest bridal line to planning promotional events for upcoming collections and using photoshop experience to edit campaign images, I loved it all and soaked in as much knowledge as possible. While day-to-day life at the desk was enjoyable, my favorite days were Johnathan’s shoot days. There, I learned the difference between catalog and editorial styling, how to assemble a shot list, a call sheet (refer to artifacts), and how to coordinate with venues, photographers, models, directors, and other creatives to create a cohesive vision for a project.

I knew I could implement what I had learned that summer into my new digital Style Director role at Garnet & Black Magazine. When the print Style director graduated in December of 2019, I assumed the role of Style Director after being on the Style Team for six months. That spring, I created a style pitch form that required every style pitch to include a mood board, color story, visual plan, and an editorial plan. I did this because I took part in a designer’s creative editorial process, and I wanted to hold Garnet & Black to the same level of professionalism. And with that standard came responsibility.

In the fall of 2020, I took RETL 115, Fashion History: A global view, with Dr. Marianne Bickle. Learning about the leather and fur industry and its effects on our environment was my favorite part of the course and left a lasting impact on me. Learning about the animal abuse that often takes place during the fur production process was heartbreaking. I also learned that the amount of water used in producing one leather handbag was equal to the amount a person needs to drink to stay healthy over a 23-year period. A leather jacket is equal to 388 lbs of carbon-equivalent greenhouse gas emissions.

 

It was then that I decided not to purchase leather and fur goods unless they are vintage. And when young music icon Lil Nas X wore a western-inspired fuchsia leather Versace look to the Grammys in 2020, I knew I wanted to create an Garnet & Black spread surrounding this topic. For its Spring 2020 issue, Garnet & Black produced its first solo menswear shoot on a ranch, titled, Urban Cowboy, as we highlighted locally and sustainably sourced leather and fur pieces. We also created our first video for this project, highlighting the behind-the-scenes process of the shoot. I wanted to show the Columbia community how we create and how our style team has developed a culture of sustainability and inclusion. This was also our first online magazine, and it allowed us to explore a more digital side of G&B style that we would continue to dive into as we grew our team. I took the lesson I had used in class and used it as not only inspiration, but also as reference point for research for this shoot, once again taking my within and beyond the classroom resources and applying them within my leadership position within my organization. 

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BTC Johnathan Kayne Interns at Atlanta Market

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BTC Johnathan Kayne call sheet 

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BTC G&B Urban Cowboy Summer 2020

By spring 2021, Garnet & Black had grown from a team of four stylists to twelve and had begun producing new style content every two weeks. That spring, I led my team from Florence, Italy, as I was studying abroad at Florence University of the Arts for the semester. I took a fashion styling course to fulfill my minor requirements. I learned about the differences between runway, editorial, film, and celebrity styling. I was also given tips on maintaining and improving relationships with retailers that you pull clothes from, building the perfect mood board and styling kit, and editing style ideas into stories.

 For our final project, we had to style one of our professor’s clients using clothes from the Florence University of the Arts FLY vintage archive closet, which I would later use as an inspiration for storing clothes within Garnet & Black at UofSC. I could finally use those seeds that had been planted in my story to cultivate a network of like-minded creatives on campus.

Garnet & Black’s onboarding process needed to be improved upon during my last year to make our new hires more comfortable and enhance our style hiring process before passing on the torch to the following Style Director. I led our first Style Team orientation workshop to aid in this process, taking all the knowledge from the seeds planted around me and pouring it into my team. I did this by putting together a step-by-step presentation explaining our editorial process, with guidelines about creating style stories, information about Garnet & Black and our mission, how to network with retailers, and more (see Artifacts). To create this presentation, I used many of my direct notes and lessons I learned in my fashion styling class in Florence, including how to build the perfect stylist's kit, how to edit groups of clothes into style stories, and tips when creating your mood board. This served as a resource for the stylists to reference back to throughout the semester. 

For my senior semester, I wanted to educate myself on the designers who shaped fashion history and explore their revolutionary impact on the industry. I decided to take RETL 216, History of Designers, with professor Molly Willis. I was captivated by the history and began to compile my research documents into informational articles for my fashion research collection on my website. This reminded me that growth only comes when there is a thirst for knowledge. I did this because the more background knowledge you acquire about a brand, a style icon, or a publications aesthetics, the easier it will be to make calculated and informed styling decisions. I encouraged this within my Garnet & Black Style Team; for example, during our weekly style meetings, I would ask that everyone bring in an iconic met gala look to review with the group before we got started. We concluded our winter semester with a presentation night, in which we drew celebrities’ names out of a hat and had to create a style pitch that works with the celeb’s aesthetic based on personal research.

Using the seeds planted around me and the educational resources I obtained from the University of South Carolina, I learned that I could pour that knowledge back into the leadership of Garnet & Black, growing my garden from a team of 4 to 14 like-minded creatives whom all have dreams of working in fashion media one day. And because I was able to lay down stable foundational roots, I am proud to say I am leaving behind a team that plants their own seeds and uses their wealth of academic knowledge to cover this campus in innovative creativity for years to come.

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WTC Fashion Styling Final Project using vintage Emilio Pucci 

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BTC Link to Garnet & Black On-Boarding Presentation

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WTC Fashion Styling Mood Board

FLOWERING IN THE FIELD

KEY INSIGHT 2: Learning the value of outreach.

I remember sitting in my principals of public relations class in 2018, thinking that I would never go into public relations or social media, but then my professor stressed that public relations is so much more than press releases and promotional events. It’s outreach. It’s engaging with your community, whether from in-person events or through social media. It’s an integral part of developing and growing your audience, network, and team. These were all lessons I would learn and apply as I stepped into my new role as Style Director of the Garnet & Black Magazine.

In the fall of 2020, I had a meeting with Mark Maddaloni, Garnet & Black’s then editor in chief, about growing our style team. We discussed the value of hiring students as freshmen and why it is so important to have multiple years of experience during your time in student media. At the time, Garnet & Black did not have a position specifically meant to oversee the hiring process, leaving all the hiring efforts to the section heads themselves. Tabling at Russell was great for exposure but not great at engaging first-year students enough to fill out an application.

Using what I had learned in my principals of public relations class, I put together a hiring presentation that would advertise our G&B style team to first-year students. I presented to introductory journalism, public relations, and visual communications classes to specifically target a freshman audience. That semester, the style team applications more than doubled. We steadily increased growth through hiring presentations each semester, leading me to finish with 25 style applicants in the spring of 2022.

I also spoke with Mark about improving our exposure within the Columbia community. I decided to take boxes of magazines to the Soda City street market on Main St and hand them out to attendees. Although each magazine box is around thirty pounds each and contains sixty magazines, I distributed four boxes in under an hour. Many people told me that they had been following G&B and were proud of the quality student work we were producing. This only fueled my fire to increase engagement and grow our audience.

At the end of 2021, I sat down with Mark again to discuss adding an Engagement Director position to our managing team. This person would oversee the hiring process (including hiring presentations) and community events such as the soda city market and our print launch party. They would also manage internal social events, such as senior awards and our monthly staff night out. Once we discussed the job outline, Mark asked me if I could fill the role for the upcoming year. I respectfully declined, as I knew I had more goals I wanted to accomplish for style, but this experience taught me the value of outreach and public relations. I knew I would continue to visit classrooms and attend Soda City throughout my time at Garnet & Black.

One of those goals for style was to find new, innovative ways to promote our content. So, when Griffin Macdonald and Joshua Tekle, lead producers of the Garnet Media Group podcast “Fit Check!” asked me to be a guest host of an episode, I jumped at the opportunity. Talking with Griffin and Josh about G&B’s creative process and the fashion industry in such detail was incredibly freeing. I enjoyed it so much that this eventually led me to create a Garnet & Black style podcast titled “Garment & Black.” Hosted by me, our style director, with a different member of our style team as a guest co-host each week. This allowed members of the style team to explain their creative processes, share where they find inspiration, promote their published projects, and talk about events in the fashion industry that week.

I knew I still had a lot to learn regarding social media content creation, which is why I was so excited to take social media marketing strategy with professor Christopher Huebner in the spring of 2019. We did case studies on different brands’ social media presence, prepared social projects to achieve specific brand goals, and learned ways to reframe our social media strategy. I was awarded a Hootsuite social media marketing certificate after completing the course. This all had a hand in helping me land my fall 2021 internship with the non-profit Atlanta-based art magazine ART PAPERS.

Art Papers is an Atlanta-based nonprofit organization with an educational mission to provide accessible forums for documenting, examining, commissioning, and presenting contemporary art and culture in the world today. This is done in print, online, and in-person through the magazine, website, and live programs, respectively. Art Papers stands behind the mission that art is and should always be for everyone, and because I see fashion as an extension of art, I knew I had to apply. Two weeks into my Art Papers internship, my editorial supervisor asked me to conduct a social media audit for their accounts. Using the knowledge from my social media strategy class, I put together a social media audit presentation where I tracked Art Paper’s insights across platforms over seven weeks. I already knew how to conduct these audits thanks to my within-the-classroom Hootsuite social media marketing experience, which greatly expanded my knowledge of social media marketing. This experience taught me the value of consistency in social media, as engagement increased the more consistently ART PAPERS posted. I also helped them promote their annual Art Papers auction event and proposed ideas for the social media coverage of the auction, many of those ideas stemming from lessons I learned in my social media class. 

After achieving my external outreach goals for Garnet & Black, I began to look internally at the organization to assess our style team needs to keep up with our new fast-paced two-week production cycle. My team and I needed to secure a location, pull clothing communicate a clear vision for the shoot, schedule fittings, all while considering the availability of the models, photographers, videographers, writers, makeup artists, and anyone else involved within our two-week cycle time frame. This required an infrastructure shift in how we would communicate with our shoot teams. Because we needed modeling talent faster, we created a modeling form for prospective talent to answer questions such as “Why do you want to model for G&B?” and “What type of shoot do you feel the most affinity toward being a part of? Is there any specific story you want to help tell?” This was extremely helpful in finding models that aligned themselves with the narratives of the stories we were portraying. Therefore, our models were more comfortable and our production process more efficient. The modeling spreadsheet now has over 70 responses and continues to grow during every hiring period.

A few months after the shift to our two-week production cycle, our retailers began to raise concerns about how often we were pulling clothing from their boutiques, just as we were starting to raise concerns about the lack of categories of clothing that our retailers could provide. To combat this issue, I created a form that requires every style team member to reach out to at least two potential retailers in the area that offer menswear or plus-size clothing each semester. I also proposed that we create a G&B style closet as a solution to over-pulling clothes from our retailers and to expand our categories of clothing. To mend and further our relationship with our retailers, I then took them a box of magazines each, complete with a goody bag and thank you note signed by all the members of our style team.  Since this initiative began, we have added four new retailers, bringing more inclusivity, representation, and community exposure to our magazine.

Due to the number of new style team members and infrastructure changes to our production process, I created a folder for the style team within our magazine OneDrive. It is broken up into four subfolders. The first is our resources and guides page, where stylists can find our onboarding presentation, retailer list and guidelines, the modeling spreadsheet, a G&B contact sheet, and a sample style pitch with a mood board. The second is our production schedule tab, which includes all the greenlit style pitches for each cycle, our internal website tutorials, and our web publishing schedule. The third is our style shoot BTS folder, in which each stylist can make a folder for the behind-the-scenes of their shoots for social to then use for content promotion. The last folder is our project documents folder, where shoot teams can place their mood board, call sheet, project outline and production schedule, and any additional documents needed for their shoots all in one place.

Through the knowledge from my social media courses I was able to use my resources to grow the Garnet & Black and Art Papers audience. Through theses experiences, I learned the importance and value of public relations. Professor Wu was right when she said that public relations is more than social media and press releases. It’s the external and internal management of messages to your audience, and I plan to keep communicating those messages as I blossom in my fashion field.

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BTC Link to Garnet & Black Hiring Presentation

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Passing out magazines at Soda City 

Fit Check Podcast

Link to podcast

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Garment & Black Logo Draft 

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WTC Hootsuite Social Media Certificate

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BTC ART PAPERS hashtag research

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G&B model casting call

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The spring 2022 cover story had over 20 extras.

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Delivering magazines to vestique

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BTS of G&B style story "Summer of Innocence" 

ROOTED IN COMMUNICATION AND COLLABORATION 

KEY INSIGHT 3: Learning to collaborate and communicate effectively from across the world during a pandemic. 

In February of 2020, I was elated. I had just landed a fashion internship in New York City, a city I hadn’t stopped dreaming about since I was sixteen. I was ecstatic to learn that I would be CRFashionbook’s summer closet assistant, managing the style closet as well as assisting on set days. Shooting and styling editorial is my favorite part of what I do as Style Director, and I was so elated to bring that same passion to a publication started by the influential fashion creative Caroline Roitfeld. I returned home from spring break to find that the summer program had been canceled due to Covid-19 concerns. After grieving the loss of a great opportunity, I focused on what I wanted to come out of this time, and eventually realized that I just wanted to create content, in whatever way possible. I was fortunate that Garnet & Black had shot our spring 2020 story, Urban Cowboy, before spring break, giving us time to focus on how we were going to edit, design, and publish our spring 2020 issue amid an unprecedented global pandemic.

At this time Garnet & Black was still producing four print issues each school year, but after students were sent home after spring break due to covid concerns, G&B had to decide if we were going to continue a quarterly print production cycle during the pandemic. Our editor-in-chief, Mary-Bryant Charles, called a meeting with all the section heads to discuss transitioning to a bi-annual publication. She explained how this decision would benefit the magazine as well as each section. This was a leadership quality that I admired about Mary B and resolved to practice in the leadership of my own team. For style, she explained how transitioning into bi-annual print production allowed us to receive more style space in each print issue, as well as dive further into our web content. This also encouraged us to explore different avenues related to style, such as beauty, skincare, and interior design.  It was a no-brainer decision for me.

In the fall of that following year, our new editor in chief Mark Maddaloni proposed that we increase our production timeline and publish new content every two weeks instead of once a month. While I agreed it was a great idea for content production and necessary for the natural growth of our organization, I needed to meet with Mark, our creative director Emily Schooner, and our managing editor Taylor Jennings Brown to discuss how the increase of production cycles affected the style content creation timeline. Because our style stories are typically shot on the weekends due to students’ availability, our stylists needed the full two weeks to be able to complete their style stories. Through collaboration with the managing team, we established a style production timeline that worked within our article cycle, including deadlines and mid-cycle check in’s for the stylists every other week. We did these check-ins at our bi-monthly style meetings on the weeks that we didn’t meet as a full staff. This had the unexpected benefit of creating community within our style team and allowed us to deepen our relationships with each other, even while meeting on zoom.

In the spring of 2021, I led the G&B style team from Florence, Italy, where I participated in SAI’s study abroad program. Due to covid concerns, our program had a delayed start date of February 27th, which gave me time to pre-shoot Garnet & Black’s spring 2021 spring editorial content. We wrapped four G&B style shoots in my last two weeks in America. At the end of February, I traveled to Florence Italy, and began my spring semester at Florence University of the Arts. There that I took an Art, Fashion, Food and Wine Journalism course, in which my classmates and I became the arts and culture editors of the university’s student magazine, BLENDING. Under direction from Tommaso, the editor-in-chief, we each wrote a story for the spring print magazine within our field of interest. I chose to do a story on the influential 1960s Florence designer Emilio Pucci, and his legacy that still lingers throughout the city today. While I was writing the Pucci article for the class, I was also writing my cover story, “Retro Reflections” for the spring 2021 issue of Garnet & Black. I knew that collaborating across the globe with a seven-hour time difference during a pandemic would be challenging, but it was worth it. Through closely working with our article and managing editors during many 1 am editing sessions, I learned that intense dedication to collaboration and communication is necessary within your publication to achieve the greatest outcome.

For both the Retro Reflections and Pucci pieces, I was heavily inspired by the 1960s. Not only because of the social, political, and environmental similarities between the sixties and the beginning of the 2020 decade but also because of the fashion and makeup that was trending at the time. Working on both stories in Florence simultaneously allowed me to view the two projects from both an American and International perspective, something that I could not have achieved without the communication and collaboration from my fellow editors of both BLENDING and Garnet & Black. The collaboration continued when Mark told me that Zhané Bradley, one of our G&B photo editors, would be painting one of the photos from the shoot for the spring 2021 cover. Later that year “Retro Relections” won the 2021 Associated Collegiate Press Pacemaker for the best magazine cover. In an interview for The State Newspaper, reporter Trudi Gilfillian said,

“Bradley shared her success with the magazine’s team, from EIC               Maddaloni to the photographer, the style editor, and everyone else on staff who contributed to the project.”

This was a testament to the success of the collaborative work environment at Garnet & Black and reaffirmed my belief that effective collaboration and communication are necessary within your publication to achieve the greatest outcome.

In the fall of that year, I took publication writing and design with professors Rebekah Friedman and Michaela Taylor. In this class, we were tasked with creating the fall 2021 edition of the School of Journalism and Mass Communications alumni magazine, Intercom. I served as lead editorial editor for the semester and assisted my professors in holding AP style workshops, and editing write nights. I also wrote two stories for the magazine, covering J school alumni Stephanie Durso Mullin and Taylor- Jennings Brown. We edited all our stories as a team at Intercom, which showed me that input from others is necessary when pursuing success in leadership. 

The alumni update I wrote on Taylor-Jennings Brown for Intercom, Story Telling from the Start, was especially meaningful to me as she was my managing editor at Garnet & Black the year before becoming an NPR Kroc Fellow. We had a collaborative and harmonious relationship during her time at G&B, even though our sections didn’t directly interact with one another. In a letter of recommendation, Taylor writes,

“Although Parker’s role as style director does not require constant direct interaction with mine, she has gone out of her way to seek understanding on my decision-making process concerning the long-term vision for the magazine and she does the same with the rest of our editorial staff. Parker understands the significance of every section’s role in the process of successfully running our magazine. She is constantly being an active listener and seeking to learn from fellow staff members through consistent dialogue and collaboration.”

This validated my efforts towards effective collaboration across sections, and in the classroom, and proved my efforts were benefiting our organization as a whole. Through efforts of consistently improved collaboration, our magazine was able to build the infrastructure that allowed us to more than double our staff within two years. I now know that for every creative project I am a part of, I will be rooted in the effective collaboration and communication tools that I learned at Garnet & Black, BLENDING, and Intercom, and I will continue to expand upon these tools as I move forward in my career.

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Urban Cowboy mood board 

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Urban Cowboy Digital Magazine video

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One of our last G&B shoots before I went abroad

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WTC Emilio Pucci Article 

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G&B Retro Reflections Cover

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WTC Intercom Alumni Update

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WTC Storytelling from the Start 

ELITISM IN FASHION STEMS FROM THE SYSTEM

LEADERSHIP PROJECT

Through my experiences serving as the Style Director for the Garnet & Black Magazine, networking within my field, internships, and within the classroom experiences both abroad and at the University of South Carolina, I discovered that it is significantly more difficult for low-income individuals to succeed in the fashion media industry. This is due to the problems relating to the elitism of sustainability, opportunity, and lack of financial resources for beginning creatives in the fashion industry. Through my plan to increase efforts of affordable sustainability, crowdfunding opportunities through alumni relations, and diversity and inclusion efforts, the Garnet & Black style team can combat elitism in fashion and provide talented students at every income level with the tools to succeed.

Combatting Elitism in Sustainability

According to a study done last year, a survey by M&S and Oxfam found that our nation's wardrobes hold 3.6 billion pieces of unworn clothing– that’s an average of 57 items per person – with an average of 16 items worn only once, and 11 still with the tags on. And on top of that, one in 20 people own over 50 items in their wardrobe with the tags still on. According to the study and current rate of global fashion consumption, fashion will account for one-quarter of the world’s annual carbon budget by 2050.

Consumers are beginning to realize this and consider their sustainability efforts when purchasing new items.

Ways in which elitism damages the fashion industry’s sustainability efforts.

Sustainable consumerism has become a way of proving both wealth and ‘wokeness.’ ‘Green’ products typically cost 50% more than the ‘normal’ version of the product. Green products may be defined as products that contain recycled materials, reduce waste, conserve energy or water, use less packaging, reduce the number of toxins disposed or consumed, and are produced in safe work environments. This price gap between ‘green’ and ‘normal’ products stimulates a divide in the sustainability movement. Climate activists and influencers who can afford this marked-up clothing may view themselves as more passionate about the environment than those who cannot afford it solely because they spent more money on a sustainable product. This wealth divide creates competitiveness between wealthy climate activists, competing to prove themselves the most sustainable, as well a cycle of shame for those who cannot afford the luxury of sustainable garments. This elitism harms sustainability efforts by turning away passionate consumers who want to afford sustainable clothing. 

 

The well-designed fashion garments that should strive to fill our closets with are relevant to the time and place of where you are in that moment, balancing personal expression and honoring the people, skills, time, and natural elements involved in the process.

Using our unique vantage point to generate solutions

As stylists for Garnet & Black, we use clothing and concepts to bring about new and unique ideas that challenge the status-quo about what style editorial can be, what true style represents, and challenge the concept of elitist fashion, all while fulfilling G&B's mission of putting the underserved and underrepresented communities at our forefront. We are storytellers, the point of contact between designers, celebrities/models, and our audience. At Garnet & Black, we have a crucial role in the messaging regarding sustainable fashion and diversity and inclusion. We are actively pursuing this initiative by covering topics related to sustainability in the form of articles and editorial shoots, working with second-hand retailers in the area such as Sid & Nancy and Revente to pull vintage clothing for shoots, requiring retailer accessibility and accountability efforts, and establishing a sustainable G&B Style Closet. I also want to ensure that we stay true to Garnet & Black's diversity and inclusion mission by ensuring that we have models of all backgrounds and sizes represented in our magazine. If it becomes evident that a stylist is consistently not following this policy, it results in immediate removal from the style team.

Personal experiences that have led to solutions (connection to key insights)

In the Fall of 2021, one of my stylists asked if they could have a one-on-one meeting with me to discuss their future in student media and on the Garnet & Black Style team. I happily obliged but was saddened when this student told me they could not continue producing because the financial burden and pressure to obtain clothing for their shoots weighed on them.

“I know we can use the retailers in the area to pull clothes, but our retailers only offer petite women’s clothing, leaving stylists very few options for the representation of menswear and plus-sized items, often resorting to us buying from fast fashion brands and sourcing those clothes ourselves. Also, as a freshman, I don’t have the space to store the clothing separately from my own belongings or have space for models to come over for fittings,” she said.

I am incredibly grateful that this student felt comfortable enough to share her concerns with me and resolved to address every issue she brought to my attention.

First, I met with Sydney Patterson, Garnet & Black’s Assistant Director of Student Media, to discuss the possibility of acquiring space for a G&B style closet. This would allow room for our stylists to store borrowed and purchased clothing away from their personal belongings, give them a place within Garnet Media Group to hold fittings, and a space for stylists to store quality clothing and accessories for upcoming shoots. I also discussed the implementation of a style budget. If approved, this would also be where sustainable clothing and equipment purchased from the budget would be held.

Sydney agreed that the style closet was a step forward for Garnet & Black but explained to me that to reserve space within Garnet Media Group, I needed to connect with the editor in chief of the Daily Gamecock newspaper and select members of the WUSC radio station to explain why G&B style team needed one of their unused office spaces. For the style budget, she recommended that I build a budget proposal to take to our director of student media, Sarah Scarborough.

Implementation Plan

Step one

I planned to connect with these student media members in late March to discuss the logistics of installing the closet. I know this will work and is a proven industry-forward initiative because many other fashion publications do their styling in-house by pulling from their publication closets. I was chosen to be a summer 2020 fashion closet intern at the influential Hearst publication CR Fashion Book before the internship program was canceled due to Covid-19 concerns. I plan to include a clothing rack that can also store shoes and accessories, garment bags for our stylists to carry clothing to shoots, a steamer for wrinkled garments, a last-minute style checklist for the stylists to make sure they are prepared for shoot day, as well as a form dedicated to logging the clothing that is rented from the style closet.

Step two

After meeting with members of student media, they both assured me that this was a step in the right direction and a great initiative but ultimately said that there was not enough space in their office operations for the G&B style closet. I am now working closely with our Editor in Chief Aliza Jane Hicks and Director of Student Media Sarah Scarborough to reserve space for the closet that will be sustainable and successful for years to come. 

Step three 

In the event that this does not happen by the time I fulfill my tenure, I will write a list of resources and next steps for the next style director that includes reaching out to the Russell House organizations coordinator to acquire space, reaching out to different retail organizations, professors, advisors, and more.

Building Alumni Relations

I proposed the first style team budget to our Director of Student Media, Sarah Scarborough, in August of 2021. After consideration, she expressed that funding would not be available for the style team. I learned over winter break that we were awarded the ability to receive crowdfunding from alumni and donors of student media. I resolved to improve relations with notable Garnet & Black alumna to eventually establish a Garnet & Black LinkedIn networking group and student media fund.

Step one

I first went to the Garnet & Black office archives and pulled every magazine off the shelf that the organization has produced in the last 27 years. I searched each masthead on LinkedIn to see what notable alumni are up to and if they would be willing to connect.

Step two

I then used my senior spring break, March 6-12th, to take a trip to New York to network with creatives in the fashion industry and connect with Garnet & Black alumna working in the city. I met with the co-founder of Garnet & Black and President and Chief Revenue Officer at Bustle Digital Group, Jason Wagenheim, to discuss our love of student media, beginning steps in the fashion media industry, and networking within the creative field. I mentioned to Jason that we produce all our style content with no financial assistance, to which he replied,

“You don’t get a styling budget for your shoots? You should have a budget.”

Next Steps and Evaluation

Although our alumni are unique in their various talents and field positions, there was a common thread with every meeting. They wanted to connect.

Step three

This month I plan to propose a Garnet & Black alumni LinkedIn network, allowing our previous community of creatives to connect while opening doors of opportunity for low-income creatives preparing to enter their respective industries.

In this LinkedIn group, we will update our alumni with our online print edition launch dates, release G&B “from the archive’s” posts, promote our notable stories, and release periodic call-to-action posts asking alumni to donate to student media.

Step four

I am also proposing that the next style director and editor in chief create a "Garnet & Black Magazine" tab on the University's crowdfunding website. Right now when you visit the crowd funding website, there is no tab to specifically donate to Garnet & Black, only to student life. WUSC (the radio station) has its own tab where they can directly receive funds for its organization. I think G&B could benefit greatly from creating their own as well.

Step five

I created a list of notable G&B alumni contact information titled "List of weak ties". According to the Defining Decade by clinical psychologist Dr Meg Jay “Information and opportunity spread farther and faster through weak ties than through close friends because weak ties have fewer overlapping contacts. Weak ties are like bridges you cannot see all the way across, so there is no telling where they might lead.” I want to help my team build their own bridges. So I have left them the list of alumni to specifically invite to the network in the case that it does not get realized by the time I graduate. 

Conclusion 

I hope that by consistently posting and building a thriving alumni network, not only will the Garnet & Black Style team benefit financially, but it will also give a wealth of networking opportunities to seniors about to enter the socially dependent magazine industry.

 

The Garnet & Black style closet and budget initiatives aim to increase affordable sustainability, provide low-income students networking opportunities and menswear and plus-size styling options, and increase diversity and inclusion in representing clothing of all forms, sizes, and styles. Because these initiatives involve outside stakeholders such as directors, board members, other organization leaders, and regulations regarding funding, this initiative could take another year or so to fully complete. It is my hope that through the foundations I have laid within my style team that this initiative becomes fully realized and continues to contribute to the success of the publication in the many years to come.

References and Sources

Oxfam annual report: https://www.oxfam.org.uk/documents/540/Oxfam-Annual-Report-and-Accounts-2020-21.pdf

Bustle Elitism article: https://www.bustle.com/style/sustainable-fashion-diversity-plus-size-affordable

Low income sustainable shame article: https://charlatan.ca/2020/08/sustainable-fashions-elitism-shames-low-income-erases-racialized-histories/

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Garnet & Black Earth Day Style Shoot 

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Link to Garment & Black Pilot Episode: Sustainability with Mia McManus 

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Garnet & Black Love Your Mothers Nature Inspired Makeup Editorial  

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Garnet & Black Style Team Upcycling Workshop 

Link to Garnet & Black Style Budget Proposal PDF  

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Meeting Jason Wagenheim at Bustle Digital Group   

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Meeting alumni Senior Editor

Justin Fenner at Penske Media   

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University of South Carolina Crowd Funding website 

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Garnet & Black Style Team with Alumni and SNL Stylist Marquis Bias

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Personal Website : QR code to additional artifacts 

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