Competition unleashes student creativity on silk tie designs

Silk ties, especially upscale ones that cost up to $120, are unlikely to make their way into many undergraduate student fashion statements. But as far as classroom projects go, ties proved to be a perfect fit.

A Department of Environment, Textiles and Design course at UW–Madison, led by professor Jennifer Angus, spent the spring 2005 semester designing a new line of retro-conversational ties for the fashion company XMI. The project is part of an annual UW–Madison competition sponsored by XMI, which sells worldwide but is based in Chippewa Falls.

“This is the closest my students get to a real-life commercial project while they are still students here, complete with a real client and real design rules,” says Angus. “It can be a little anxiety-causing.”

That may have been especially true this year, as the clients – XMI owners Bert and UW–Madison alumnae Betsy Pulitzer – decided to drop the initial design theme a couple weeks into the project. The project that began with a Japanese cultural theme had morphed into Art Deco-influenced “conversationals” from the 1940s and 1950s.

“Students don’t always respond well to change,” Angus says. “I told them this is what often happens in industry, so you might as well get used to it.”

Working with the Pulitzers has been an inspiring experience for students every year, Angus says, noting that Bert Pulitzer is a renowned name in fashion who rubs elbows with the likes of Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein. His ties have also been very hot of late thanks to a partnership making XMI the neckwear of choice on NBC’s “The West Wing.”

“He’s really encouraging to students, and tells them to never change their individual style for the company,” she says. “He’s also a great influence for them because he’s more commercial than arty, and he’s not interested in something that won’t sell. Almost all of my students are looking to have a place in the fashion industry.”

Students made a collection of four different designs that build on common themes. The designs are brought to life on sample fabrics through a screening process and presented on boards to the Pulitzers and the class.

Junior Jessica Weisen of Pewaukee, this year’s competition winner, didn’t seem fazed by sudden change in themes. In fact, she scrapped all of her own ideas in the last week of the competition and went back to one of her early instincts.

“I was really into the linear aspects of the architecture of that era,” Weisen says. “I was kind of thinking about the art deco style of buildings in Miami as my cue. It worked well in my ties because there are overlapping lines in my designs that end up making new patterns.”

For the images in her ties, she built around the theme of the jazz lounge, with sketch images of jazz instrumentalists and argyle patterns of martini glasses and cocktail olives. Her drawings were deliberately kept as line sketches, like they were drawn out on cocktail napkins.

Weisen says the project was a fruitful exercise in real fashion design, where change is expected and artistic license needs to meet commercial tastes. Those factors will be critical next year as Weisen completes her final undergraduate year at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. The institute has a degree partnership with UW–Madison in which Madison textile design and apparel design students may finish their senior year there, which is ground zero for the fashion industry.

The Pulitzers started the competition in 2001 as a way to give back to the university. Students compete for $850 for first place; $600 for second place, and $300 for third place designs. But the money is secondary to the prospect of their student designs hitting the clothing market. At least two previous UW–Madison designs have gone into production, Angus says.