He’s been called the tastemaker, fashion guru, style Czar and rubs shoulders with the likes of Tory Burch, Rachel Zoe and yes, even Oprah! Meet 1983 graduate Ken Downing and Senior Vice President & Fashion Director for Neiman Marcus.  We caught up with him at an AD&D event last spring where he wowed an audience of 200 with his enthusiastic wit, sage fashion advice and his trend forecast. What’s on Ken’s list for Spring 2013? Orange as the new neutral, cool blues, maniacal prints and gladiator sandals.

Lookin’ spiffy on a bike is what 2011 graduate Sonia McBride is all about. Sonia has been building chic, urban cycling apparel under the brand Babecycle. The line was featured in the Fall issue of Seattle Magazine where Sonia was selected as the most innovative designer for the magazine’s annual Seamless in Seattle Fashion Competition. When she’s not pedaling about town in her fashionable and functional biking threads, Sonia works for a bike bag company and creates new bike apparel.

Sewn Product Services provides full service product development services to the apparel and soft goods industries. Their services include patternmaking, prototyping, grading, pre-production planning, factory brokering, and production management.

Kristine & Jenny Mae met in the classrooms of AD&D, graduated in 2009, and combined their experiences to launch Sewn Product Services directly after graduation. They continue to turn to the graduates of the AD&D program to find the talent and skills required for their growing enterprise.

Rachel started working as a Product Developer at True North gear after graduation.  While there, a jacket she codesigned, the The Dragon Shield™ FR Softshell Jacket,  won the 2012 North American APEX Award based on the syle, function and fit as well as the most innovative and appropriate uses of Polartec® fabric in the design.  Congratulations, Rachel!

See more about the jacket here.

Marti had seen photos of Yves Saint Laurent’s Mondrian day dress hundreds of times, but  never understood why the garment was special until she read Holly Brubach’s fascinating New Yorker article that ended up changing her whole life. Saint Laurent designed the shift “to do without darts, molding the panels of fabric to the breasts by means of gridlike horizontal and vertical seams,” as it turns out. With her description, Marti realized fashion writing doesn’t necessarily have to be empty, as is the mainstream tendency. It can convey technical working concepts, as a means to instill a respect of the vast challenges in the technical realms of apparel.  And ideally, fashion writing would also be funny, and a little strange too, if blended with the influence of Gavin McInnes, the former Do’s and Don’ts fashion writer of Vice Magazine.

Marti enrolled in what she refers to as SCCC’s “freakishly rigorous Apparel Design program”, and upon graduating, developed Worn Out—the fashion column of the alternative Seattle weekly newspaper The Stranger. Worn Out profiles local designers, and classes like patternmaking and construction gave her the insight necessary to ask smart questions during interviews. Every year, Marti welcomes SCCC’s fresh batch of apparel graduates as potential column subjects, because their new designs are always the best in town. Past SCCC Worn Out subjects include: Aubrey McMillan’s retro-inspired airline stewardess uniforms, Celeste Montalvo’s tuxedo-pants running shorts, and Kirk Mason’s briefs for “fat men.” Check out her column featuring the work of alumnae Lenna Petersen and Miriam Reynolds here. It’s all about veils with vroom. Photo credit/Timothy Rysdyke

Prairie Underground was hailed in Seattle Magazine as “one of the best, brightest, most innovative and perhaps most commercially successful brands to come out of Seattle in the last decade.”  Is it coincidence that six of the seven employees owners Camila Eckersley and Davora Lindner have hired are from our program?  We think not.

We would love to hear from you!  If you are a graduate, click on the contact information above to update us with the latest and greatest in your career and life.  We love pictures and links too.