Don’t be afraid of taking the risk
“If you’re thinking about coming back to school,” Caroline Sulatycki says to prospective adult students, “don’t be afraid of taking the risk. Having the additional knowledge is always a good thing, even if you don’t do exactly what you first thought you would. No education is a waste of time.”
Caroline is a young adult student from Canada who found UNCG through a connection made at a Swedish university. She entered the Consumer, Apparel, and Retail Studies Program (CARS) in Fall, 2007, as a second degree student in Apparel Design.
Caroline has a degree in International Development from the University of Guelph in Canada. When she finished her program there, she realized that although it was interesting and she learned a lot, she did not have a passion to work in that field. What she did feel passionate about was fashion, an interest dating back to the 8th grade when she began to sew. “In high school I made my own clothes,” she recalls. “They were very colorful and I’m sure some days my mom thought I looked like a clown.”
She was considering enrollment in a Canadian program in Fashion, but she was also thinking about moving closer to her boyfriend Joe, a graduate student in the NCSU School of Design, whom she’d met at Lund University when they were both studying abroad in Sweden. She did decide to move to North Carolina and found CARS at UNCG. She liked the curriculum, liked the fact that it included a semester’s internship, and decided to enroll. She commutes 4 days a week from Durham.
More involved in her discipline
CARS offers three concentrations: Apparel Design, Retail Studies, and Global Apparel and Related Industry Studies. The curriculum provides an introduction to clothing and the fashion industry and incorporates classes from the Business School. Caroline’s Apparel Design concentration includes drawing, computer design, sewing proficiency, and a sequence of studio classes in clothing design. She especially enjoyed a Historical Costume class, which traced fashion elements through the history of clothing.
She is looking forward to her internship, perhaps in New York City, where she will be able to make the connections so important to getting a job in the highly competitive fashion industry. “Who you know in the field and industry really makes a difference,” she notes. Caroline will finish the bulk of her major in two years, but she will need extra semesters to complete the program because the major courses are strictly sequenced.
Caroline has not found a great deal of difference in Canadian and American universities, but she does find that as a second-degree student on the Chancellor’s List, she is more involved in her discipline, and she is taking fuller advantage of the extra curricular activities in her major. She is the Public Relations Director of Threads, the CARS student association, which stages an annual fashion show and hosts guest speakers in the industry. As an adult student she finds herself in a good position to encourage others to be involved as well.
It’s cool to see something you made on the runway
Last spring, Caroline designed and sewed four outfits for the Threads fashion show. She enjoyed the challenge of sewing for a model. “It’s cool to see something you made on the runway,” she says. In general, she finds the concrete nature of her work in CARS to be satisfying. “You have a finished product,” she says, “not a theory to defend.”
Clothing has not been the only area where Caroline has been immersed in design since moving to the States. She is assisting her boyfriend, Joe Harmon, with his ambitious Master’s project for his degree at NCSU. She has been helping him fabricate a supercar entirely from wood, learning to build molds, form parts with the help of powerful glues and a vacuum system, and even weaving thin strips of veneer into a twill-weave skin for parts of the car’s surface. “I did think about trying to do a clothing project with our wooden ‘cloth,”’ she laughs, “but I’ve decided against it.” She sees the value in working with other designers, even in completely different areas. “Any kind of design--architecture, industrial design--it’s a cool thing to be a part of,” she affirms. “Working with other designers is always good.”
For now, Caroline is putting in long days Monday to Thursday at UNCG, plus 2 hours on the road commuting from Durham. “School is my life right now,” she acknowledges. The fashion industry is tremendously competitive, and she knows that success as a designer with her own company is not guaranteed. “I’m realistic about it,” she reflects. “I know it can take a long time, if ever. But why not dream big?” Her second degree in a field she loves will put her in a good position to reach for some very big dreams.
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Page updated: 06-May-2009
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