Drawn like moths to the flame of fashion, scores of UC Davis students arrive each year dreaming of being the next Vera Wang or Giorgio Armani.

But by the time they graduate, these young women and men have transformed their raw talent and starry eyes into a much more practical package that offers broader horizons. In fact, they are poised to be the next generation of leaders in textile, fashion design, apparel and retail clothing industries as well as in the fashion media and at nonprofit watchdog groups.

Although fashion-bound students can find somewhat similar programs at state colleges and private trade schools, UC Davis is the only campus in the University of California system that offers several majors in textiles and fashion while providing its students a strong liberal arts background. And this is in the state that boasts the largest fashion production and distribution industry in the nation.

By virtue of being a research university, UC Davis takes "fashion study" into a new dimension, says Susan Kaiser, chair of textiles and clothing. In the past few years, especially, the emphasis has broadened into research studies that look at fashion economics, social and environmental problems, media issues and cultural influence.

Design professor Victoria Rivers points out: "We have one of the largest textile arts and costume/fashion design programs in the United States in terms of number of faculty. And it is true that we are different because we focus on global traditions, new technologies, and have an interest in social awareness, recycling and sustainability."

Dominating those social issues are the well-documented mistreatment of young female workers in garment factories around the world and the relentless fashion marketing that exploits young women.

"In terms of production, the fashion industry presents one of the most serious global human rights issues in the world today," says women and gender studies chair Leslie Rabine, whose program is now affiliated with the campus's two traditional units in fashion education — the Department of Textiles and Clothing and the Design Program.

Kaiser and Rabine are the guiding forces behind this week's student-led "Undressing Fashion" conference (see story on page 4). The current conference's themes acknowledge the attractions and repulsions of fashion, Kaiser says.

"Fashion is always a contradiction for women," she says. "On the one hand, it brings us pleasure and creativity, but on the other hand it leads to obsession and guilt about what we spent and about the production issues."

New resources offer opportunity

UC Davis is also giving its students the latest in technological training. Next week, thanks to funding from the campus and private industry, the Design Program will unveil an industry-caliber computer lab with cutting-edge design software and equipment, including a textile inkjet plotter that will allow students to take textile and fashion designs from computer screen directly to dye application on fabrics (see photo inset).

Students also benefit from being at a campus affiliated with the National Textile Center. Through this affiliation, the textiles and clothing department receives an annual $800,000 research grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce with the aim of conducting research that will revitalize the national textile and apparel industries.

The idea of expanding UC Davis' textiles and fashion prowess into the humanities came three years ago when a spark ignited between Kaiser, a cultural fashion scholar at UC Davis for a quarter century, and kindred soul Rabine. Rabine, who had just finished writing The Global Circulation of African Fashion, arrived from UC Irvine to direct the Women and Gender Studies Program.

They shared two contradictory passions: a personal love of fashion with scholarship that focuses on the social and economic problems and contradictions created through the industry and the media.

"There is a big disconnect between production and consumption, and we wanted our students to think critically about how to bridge that," Kaiser says.

Kaiser and Rabine timed their move well. In just the past five years, academics nationally have begun to recognize fashion as a legitimate area of study, says Janet Hethorn, associate professor of apparel design at the University of Delaware.

"What created the change was the national movement toward interdisciplinary work in academia," Hethorn says. "Once that interdisciplinary idea became recognized as important and valuable, fashion surfaced in new ways as an economic piece and, through the political activism surrounding it, as a social issue."

Kaiser and Rabine proposed a research-enriched undergraduate experience in the transnational production and consumption of fashion. They received a UC Davis Presidential Chair award in 2003, one of just two fellowships given by the Office of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Studies to encourage new developments and initiatives.

Since then, the professors have created joint curriculum and research projects.

Ironically, problems exposed in the fashion industry have also created more job possibilities, such as in factory monitoring for new anti-sweatshop laws and industry policies. With its more critical focus, UC Davis is better preparing its students to be able to fill these positions, Rabine says.

Examining the art of the trade

In addition to delving into fashion's social and economic problems, the new research program addresses fashion as an art form, as a major form of identity construction and as a media focus. Funding from the Presidential Chair award was used to invest in video equipment and to hire a women's studies scholar, jesikah maria ross, who uses her videography expertise to teach students how to create their own videos as part of the focus on media literacy.

By the end of the three-year pilot project, students will be able to minor in the transnational production and consumption of fashion and gain multimedia skills along with an expertise in textile and fashion designing.

Kaiser and Rabine say they ultimately want to forge a new breed of fashion professionals able to reconcile current contradictions at a sophisticated level.

"We either take fashion too seriously, like in New York, or not seriously enough when it comes to what it means in our culture and economy," Kaiser says, "such as the labor issues and how the industry is affecting the environment.

"We need leaders who can think creatively and critically on re-envisioning the industry by knowing how to make a difference."