Spotlight on Our Graduates

Fashion Design | DEC

Owner and Designer, Pedram Karimi

Describe your position and key responsibilities?
As a new designer with a small budget to work with, I do all aspects of the business myself until it gets weeks away to the fashion show. Then I have a small team that consists of a public relations manager, stylist, photographer/videographer and assistant pattern/sample maker, which completes it all for presenting the collection.

What is a typical workday in your professional life?
I have a job in a fashion related field, so I basically wake up start work at 8 a.m. and finish at 4:30 p.m. I then come to my home/studio and get things done regarding my own brand.

Outline your career path?
This career path just started. However, my background is in dance, then hair and now in fashion.

What is your best memory of the time spent at LaSalle College?
My best memories in Fashion Design are the classes of Helene Cohen and Anita Turano. I’d define them as marketing classes combined with social behaviour studies, philosophy and factual studies. Those classes would hit all the spots for me and really feed my curiosity. Sometimes I’d leave the class and feel so powerful that I felt I could conquer the world.

What was your favourite subject, while in the program?
I liked all my subjects except my Photoshop and Illustrator classes.

Describe your general feeling during your first day, week or month of school?
I was really intimidated by all the technical (sewing patterns, Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator) classes and just didn’t want to fail!

What advice would you give a student presently enrolled in the Fashion Design program?
If the fashion design field is a field you want to be in because you live it and breathe it, then go for it, I’m sure you’ll be successful. Otherwise stop and do something that you very much love!

What are the essential qualities required to succeed in the fashion world?
You have to be original, relevant, hardworking and you’ve got to have faith.