8 Oct. 20, 2014University Times

Roxana HernandezColumnist

FADS President Rachel Masters tells the UT what led her to take on a fashion career.

Passion

While many of us began to pinpoint our professional paths when we attended col-lege, others found their call-ing before university. Having displayed an early artistic in-clination, senior Rachel Mas-ters, Fashion Design major, combined her love of art and her intrigue in self-identity to pursue a career in fashion.

When Masters was 13 years old she began sketching and knitting, slowly initiating the feeling of comfort and pas-sion. Soon enough, a self-taught designer was born. Her inspiration is drawn from the basic senses. “I would say my

I draw a lot of my inspira-tion from shapes and colors. The details in textures really inspire me as well,” Masters stated.

While Masters sees a direct

correlation between art and fashion design, it is not the main reason why she chose the path of fashion. “I just think it’s really cool how fash-ion is the most basic form of self-expression, even if you’re not an artist you can still ex-press yourself in a creative way,” Masters enthusiastically explained. “As much as I en-joy the aesthetic side of fash-ion, that’s really not the reason why I’m in fashion. I think it is such a basic part of our life--we have to wear clothes every day! But we need to be more conscientious about how we wear them and I want to be able to make a change and create sustainable options of self-expression.”

When asked where she sees

answered that she would like to keep her purpose in fashion

already be working for a com-pany. I really want to work for Patagonia, as a business they encourage their custom-ers to buy less and are still a successful company,” Masters said. Patagonia is a company that uses business in order to implement solutions to the en-vironmental crisis and grow in popularity every year.

Masters’s work now is not far from what she ultimately wants to do in the future. Last

spring, Masters launched a small line for an undergraduate research project about corpo-rate takeover of the communi-ty. This small line was debuted at Storying Wyvernwood, or-ganized by the CSULA Under-graduate Department in June.

Since then, Masters’s work has become more focused and

Masters has had the oppor-tunity to work in preserving, growing, and pressing on all her creativity and potential she has. Masters expressed the great environment of the Fashion and Textiles Program saying, “My work has gotten

-nitely gotten better through the critiques from my classmates and my professors. I’ve been

program has really helped.” She believes the program to be thorough, and all her classes to be helpful as professors are always pushing students to be more creative and think out-side the box.

Besides studying Fashion Design, Masters embarks on

the Fashion Association of De-sign Students (FADS). With hopes to bring students togeth-er as a community, she will be focusing on creating more activities and discovering new aspects of fashion with others.

This position has allowed her to be part of a small commu-nity that brings in people who love the same things together. “It’s cool to hear everyone’s design inspirations, and why they are doing what they are doing,” Masters mentioned.

This month FADS will be working on making hats for cancer patients. “We’re look-ing into certain donation cen-ters at hospitals,” Masters an-nounced. With countless hours of dedication and preparation, this team is sure to make an impact on their work as well as the community.

It may all seem peachy but truth of the matter is that fash-ion students continually have to live through the miscon-ceptions that others have. One common misconception that really bothers Masters is that people think fashion students or people from the fashion world are dumb. “I have got-ten it a few times. I’m in the Honors College, and when I tell other students that I’m a Fashion Design major, their immediate reaction is clear through their face ‘what is she doing here?’—That is proba-bly the biggest misconception that really bothers me,” said Masters explaining her ex-perience. “We’re also not all shallow, sure fashion can be

is. It can be sustainable, envi-ronmentally friendly, a way of self-expression.”

Master’s emphasis on self-expression was apparent so when asked about her per-sonal style, she described her-self as having an androgynous style. “My style is comfort -able,” Masters comments. She continues, “and actually quite random. I don’t know, honest-

my style for years, and I have really random stu� in my clos-

many di�erent styles. So it’s still experimental.” Though you will never see this design-er wearing pink, short shorts, short skirts, or animal print. Given that the designer rides a motorcycle, Master’s degree of options are limited but she has no problem with the limits at all.

The energy and creativity in Rachel Masters’s life will con -tinue to guide her and inspire her every day. What started as merely a personal project has expanded into a career full of aspiration and certainly more success to come.

If you are interested in join-ing FADS for their next meet-ing, make sure to visit FADS on Wednesday at 3:15PM in room FA 239.

CSULA Designer Spotlight:

Rachel Masters

Photo By | Roxana HernandezPhoto By | Rachel Masters