By Kanika Talwar | August 25, 2026, 11:56am
For more than eight decades, the Fashion Scholarship Fund has led the charge to bolster the next generation of fashion industry talent. Concluding its sixth year of virtual programming, the 10-week Summer Scholarship Series featured leaders within their respective fields providing their expertise and knowledge.
The program held hybrid workforce preparedness sessions and masterclasses with an array of leaders from Nike, Calvin Klein, J.Crew, TikTok, Nordstrom and Kate Spade alongside Public School’s Maxwell Osborne and Dao-Yi Chow and editors from WWD, i-D, Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Seventeen and more.
“What began six years ago as an effort to stay virtually connected with our community during the pandemic has become integral to FSF’s programming,” said Peter Arnold, executive director of the Fashion Scholarship Fund. “For many of our scholars considering careers in our industry, there is a distinct vision of who they want to be and what they want to create, but the path to get there feels less clear. What we provide through the Summer Scholar Series is a platform to hear industry leaders share their unedited truth, not only about their successes but also about the hurdles they faced that ultimately shaped their signature voices.
“Watching our scholars leap to ask questions only reinforces the impact of these conversations on their perspectives. I’m deeply grateful to each of our speakers and moderators for trusting our community with their candid lessons and for helping bring clarity to their paths.”
The Power of Consumers and Reaching New Audiences
For the first course, attendees heard from Calvin Klein’s chief design officer and FSF board member Jess Lomax; Nike’s senior director of apparel excellence for Jordan design Christopher Bevans; J.Crew’s director of men’s brand marketing Michael Mangan, and Kate Spade’s general manager of jewelry and vice president of Americas wholesale, global licensing and collaborations Charlotte Warshaw. The panel explored the 2027 FSF theme of how brands can tap into consumer audience segments that are underserved and engage with new audiences to expand their reach.
Mangan advised attendees to get off their phones and go out into neighborhoods — noting that anywhere and especially in New York, there are people already doing amazing things in their communities. He said it also helps open people up to the fantastic things they wouldn’t have known about before because of our current “digital addiction.”
“It’s always good to have a very strong point of view first and foremost [when starting a business] — what do you stand for? What do you want to create?” said Lomax. “If it’s a strong enough, beautiful enough, compelling enough story, then people will come. Naturally, a lot of us as designers think about who we’re designing for, so there’s a healthy dialogue between thinking about muses and inspiration and who could potentially wear this, while keeping it true to you.”
Fashion Storytelling and Image Making
The second session saw Vogue’s fashion director and sustainability editor Tonne Goodman alongside CFDA’s Emerging Designer of the Year nominee and 2026 LVMH Prize finalist Colleen Allen speak about how to build a creative point of view. The two also gave practical advice for anyone looking to build a career in fashion editorial, branding, publishing, creative direction, design and more.
Allen shared that after being at The Row as a menswear designer, she founded her eponymous brand after going on a journey of self-discovery of identity about being a woman in America. She also was starting to think about being a women’s designer for men — and she started her own brand to answer questions surrounding the body, contributing to the greater conversation of how men move through the world and, by extension, how they dress.
“I just kind of followed my nose — to tell you the truth and I think that’s what young designers and young people in this industry need to do,” said Goodman. “They need to be able to follow their nose in terms of sticking to their guns and realizing what things mean the most to them. When you have meaning, then you have intent and when you have intent, you have motion.”
Transforming Artistry Into Products That Resonate
In the third class, the FSF community heard from Soull and Dynasty Ogun, founders and creative directors of L’Enchanteur — 2024 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund winners — in a session moderated by Tiffany Barney, FSF Scholar and three-time Virgil Abloh “Post-Modern” Scholar. The sisters spoke about their journey of building a creative language and how to transform those ideas into tangible products and experiences that resonate with consumers.
“Dynasty and I will use adversity to our advantage because everyone experiences adversity,” explained Soull. “Adversity is a key to open a door — whatever door you choose is the pathway. All the things that seemed like a step back were really just a step back to observe what we’re going to do next. It propelled us forward like a bow and arrow.”
Exploration is huge for the two when it comes to storytelling and creativity; they are constantly feeding off of their imaginations. Moreover, they both drew on their self-education and went against the grain of the industry’s institutional learning to discover things on their own. “We didn’t necessarily want to be stuck in what people were giving us or feeding us. We wanted to feed ourselves, learn for ourselves and have our own mind,” said Dynasty.
The Art of Creative Direction and World-building
The fourth session looked at how Closer cofounders Faye McLeod and Andreas Neophytou brought their ideas to life and explored creative direction and world-building for the likes of Louis Vuitton, Dior and Prada. The two also shared how to develop and curate a creative point of view, lead creative teams collaboratively and create meaningful experiences.
McLeod said Virgil Abloh was someone who “poured a lot of love into what he did” and that’s the ethos she continues to follow today. The late designer also taught her to keep her DMs open, reply to them personally and “encourage people that ask for advice.”
“You have to be vulnerable enough to create that opportunity — to go out on a limb and suggest something that, to some extent, we don’t yet know how we’re going to make,” explained Neophytou. “We don’t know how we’re going to achieve it yet, but we will figure it out. If you buy into it and you trust us, we know we’ll get there with our passion and the people we have around us. It’s not an easy thing; there’s no formula for it, but we just look for that moment every time.”
The Evolving Landscape of Media and Culture
In the fifth masterclass, Cosmopolitan and Seventeen’s editor in chief Willa Bennett and i-D’s soon-to-be editor in chief Steff Yotka spoke about the current landscape of fashion media, including breaking news and celebrity culture, alongside digital innovation and audience engagement. The two media leaders also shared how editors are adapting to the changing media landscape and how they’re influencing style, culture and consumer behavior.
“One of the greatest gifts of our generation of magazine editors, writers, thinkers is that we’re all friends,” said Yotka. “I feel like that’s a piece of advice I would give anyone. Your peers, whether they work with you at a different publication, anywhere, are your peers and you need to support each other, be there for each other, use each other as a sounding board.”
Notably, the two things Bennett looks for when hiring at the magazines are whether the person has ambition and if they actually care about the work. She also noted that the power media holds to “change the way people think about things” is powerful and telling stories that are “rich and inspiring and real and honest” is important.
Shaping Culture Through Style
The sixth session featured creative director and costume designer June Ambrose, in conversation with Cosmopolitan’s beauty editor at large Julee Wilson. The two took a look at Ambrose’s career and the lessons she learned while building a career crossing between fashion, entertainment and entrepreneurship.
“Everything I experienced going into corporate America, knowing there was no one in the building who looked like me as a young woman, a young girl of color, it was a very different place,” explained Ambrose. “That built character in me — and it also built a knowledge that was going to serve me in starting my own business. When I left to go into the record industry and start from ground zero, I needed to be financially solid.”
She also said owning creative license and IP is something that she fearlessly protects, as it’s something nobody can take away from her — “even if it’s mimicked, reproduced, or regurgitated. How you deliver it, how you own it and how you present it, is a big part of the IP.”
The Art of Fashion Show Production and Public Relations
The seventh class gave an insider’s perspective on what it takes to bring a fashion show to life with agency KCD’s chief executive officer Rachna Shah, senior vice president of media relations Brie Cross, and senior director of digital Sofia Corti-Maderna, and was moderated by Analiese McDonald, 2026 FSF Scholar. The trio discussed how production, public relations, casting, guest experience, content and more all come together to create notable runway shows and events.
Shah advised those starting in the industry to always be reading — whether it’s print, digital or on socials. “Familiarize yourself with who’s going to events, who’s writing about events, who’s wearing the clothes of these brands. That’s the best education that you can have.
“This job is too hard, and it takes up too much of your time, so if you don’t love it, it is not worth doing,” Shah said. “It’s really about understanding the passion and understanding that it’s a process. You will not be running the account. You will not be moving up every year.”
Brands and Creators Shaping Culture and Commerce
The eighth session featured Vogue’s global director of social Sam Sussman, TikTok’s vertical director and head of CPG sales Robert Reu and Nordstrom’s director of brand social and influencer Dakota Rae Lowe, in conversation with Cosmopolitan and Seventeen’s social media and video director Lucy Dolan-Zalaznick. They discussed how leading brands, platforms and publishers continue to shape digital storytelling and influence — and social media’s evolving relationship with culture and commerce.
Sussman shared that Vogue’s social media platforms serve as a “billboard” to get people on Vogue’s website or buy their print magazines. And the fashion magazine uses social media to educate and inspire people or get them excited about something they weren’t aware of previously.
“When I think about influencing purchasing behavior in particular, I’m looking at what is a natural behavior for the customer and then how do we harness that,” explained Lowe. “That requires just knowing who you’re actually talking to, spending time with that muse, that persona, that person and getting really clear about how they’re engaging on social. That to me is what’s been really successful from a ‘let’s get people to actually take an action’ perspective. Because the scroll is the easiest thing for people to do — so to get people to not do that — you have to be really compelling.”
Breaking and Remaking the Rule of Fashion
For the final session, Public School’s cofounders and creative directors Maxwell Osborne and Dao-Yi Chow sat down with WWD’s archive editor Tonya Blazio-Licorish to discuss how the brand helped redefine American fashion by developing a distinct point of view, building an enduring brand and evolving as creative leaders.
Chow said the fast trajectory of Public School’s rise was largely one of firsts — when the duo created the brand, they were looking to challenge the status quo, which made it difficult to look elsewhere as there wasn’t a blueprint to follow.
“Know that you don’t know,” said Osborne. “Know that you don’t know the answer, that it’s going to take some time. You’re leaving college and you might want to start your own line, but you don’t have that vision just yet. That will grow. Be a student and be a teacher, be curious, continue to learn — and sometimes you might not have the correct answer, but it will come.”