runway presentations, industry-led workshops, panel discussions, and portfolio reviews. Additionally, in 2018, Trends and Tours NYC, an immersive, week-long study experience was launched to give fashion merchandising and design students backstage access to Broadway costume production, visits to millinery and pattern houses, discussions with FIT faculty, workshops with Bloomingdale’s, and a panel with Women in Television & Film NYC. The experience also includes visits to the Metropolitan Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art and challenges scholars to design a custom shoe at Nike’s design studio and participate in guided conversations on buying, marketing, and career pathways. Approximately 16 students are selected for this program annually. In simple terms, the department’s chair—whose passion for her work and students is palpable—says, “We try to give our students exceptional experiences that will shape them.” In her retail management class, Arnett, who is also an actress-director-producer, requires her students to read Nikole Hannah-Jones’ “The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story” because she believes history is why formal education is as important in creative disciplines as it is in other disciplines—and that cultural context helps you shape future trends. “In order to go to the next level, you’ve got to know where you came from. You must know you were the first merchandise of these United States.” Among the many students who took that message to heart is Agnes Godwin Hall, an alumna of the fashion merchandising program and CAU’s MBA program, who has worked her way up the ranks at Macy’s and now serves as the senior director for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Another won two Virgil Abloh Awards, while another—Aaliyah Dasque, a fashion merchandising alumna—returned to CAU to serve as the department’s program manager and executive assistant. Yet another student, who became wheelchair dependent during her collegiate experience, fought her way back to the classroom, graduated, worked at a Michigan design school, and continues to thrive as a creative. With tears in her eyes, Arnett declared, “We train warriors up in here.” The department’s student warriors are soaring—winning awards, having their work shown in museums, acing their internships, being offered fulltime jobs, and seizing opportunities to design independently, for film sets, and for retailers, including American Eagle and Macy’s. And if the chair has anything to do with it, the Department of Art and Fashion will continue to fly higher, as she believes art and fashion are necessary. “Without the creative, there is no scientific. It is a must to feed the heart and the soul in order feed everything else.” Without the creative, there is no scientific. It is a must to feed the heart and the soul in order feed
everything else. “
Fall 2025
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