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The Department of Fashion Design and Merchandising strongly encourages all students to intern during the summer between their junior and senior year. We feel that an internship provides practical experience as well as building the student’s resume. Employers are impressed by the work experience and learning opportunities provided by internships.

An appropriate internship exposes the student to the fashion industry, and allows them to apply their academic knowledge to the “real world”. For this reason, we expect the student to gain knowledge on an executive or professional level that is generally found in the corporate office of a fashion organization. Many students intern as assistants in the buying office of a retail organization or the design room of a major fashion manufacturer. Some interns work in forecasting organizations, magazines or in product development. These opportunities are spread all over the United States and occasionally internationally but primarily in New York City.

Fashion internship Jessica Nelson with two supervisors and the other intern during her internship at CK Jeans in NYC in the summer of 2006.

Students are required to attend at least two preparatory meetings prior to enrolling in the internship course. They will be required to complete a resume, cover letter, and to develop learning objectives with their internship coordinator and their internship supervisor. They will be given several assignments to complete while working and are expected to turn these materials into their internship coordinator in a professional and timely manner.

We have two internship coordinators for the Fashion Department:

Fashion Merchandising:
Assistant Professor Rose Regni rjregni@vcu.edu

Fashion Design:
Associate Professor Kristin Caskey kacaskey@vcu.edu

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Student: Angela Bacskocky
Internship: Alexander McQueen
Summer 2008

Angela Bacskocky
Fashion Design Senior

I interned at Alexander McQueen in the Print and Textile Design Studio. It was a very creative environment with a lot of hands-on draping to create a print pattern and true experimentation with various materials to create amazing textiles.

I designed a print for a dress and a pair of leggings by first using Photoshop to distort an image and play with the contours of the body, and then physically draping the print on a form using cut paper to get a three dimensional view of the sides, back and arms.



It was very important at McQueen to emphasize the natural female form so this step in the print development was essential. After completing the dress, I used a similar method on the legs. Later a series of these dresses, with various embellishments and in different colors, were developed that will eventually be included in the Spring/Summer '09 Collection.

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Student: Tiffany Jones
Internship: Dallin Chase

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Student: LaShay Kenney
Internship: S&K Menswear