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look good, feel good Rising juniors from West Memphis wrap first year at the head of new TSU Fashion Society | By Charlie Morrison
Student organizations come in all shapes and sizes, and for all purposes. Some bind students together around a common cause and are fun to be a part of. Some push participants to greater heights through networking and those are important to join. Some exist to further classroom studies in a way that puts aspiring students in real-world situations, and participation in them is essential. The newly established TSU Fashion Society is one of the latter. Formed in January of this year, the Fashion Society was an organization that just had to happen at TSU, but it didn’t start on its own. The group needed leadership, it needed human energy, it needed to be created in the first place. Enter now rising junior TSUAg students Brighton Gillum and Jaylen Turner, a duo from West Memphis (Arkansas, not Tennessee) who have provided that human energy and stepped into leadership roles for the organization. Gillum and Turner, pursuing Bachelor of Science degrees in Family and Consumer Sciences with concentrations in Fashion Merchandising and Product Development, were elected to their respective positions of President and Vice-president of the organization at the turn of the new year, joining Mariah Nicholson and Jada Wilder on the organization’s leadership team. With more than 80 members committing to the organization at the outset, the need for the group was real. “It was really something TSU needed because there’s so much fashion at this school, students here take fashion really seriously, and that’s what we’re trying to highlight, because here it is a huge industry,” said Gillum in an interview with AgLink. “It’s almost like putting the fashion industry here on campus, so if you want to be in the fashion industry, you already have kind of a practice run,” said Turner. “We’re trying to really make it beneficial for everyone involved. We’re trying to connect people in any way possible.” It didn’t take long for the group to begin that process of connecting people either, as soon after their formation the Fashion Society began holding events. Many of the 80 Fashion Society participants showed up to the FarrellWestbrook auditorium for a custom tote bag creation event
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during the College of Ag Week. That event, in March, was kicked off by guest speaker and tailor to the stars, TSU alumni Randolph Williamson. The creation of the Fashion Society is concurrent with some amazing work being done by Dr. LaPorchia Davis, a leading faculty member in the Department of Human Science’s Fashion Merchandising and Product Development program. Dr. Davis has been scoring points with her students both in the classroom and out in the world, where she has led a number of outstanding study abroad trips. The fashion students under Dr. Davis have gone on fashionrelated study abroad trips to Los Angeles, Milan, Rome, London, and more, and that’s just in the past couple of years. It’s work that’s earned Dr. Davis the praise of the fashion students themselves, who credit Dr. Davis for exposing them to the greater world of fashion. “I love Dr. Davis. She helps with everything she can and always tries to put us first,” said Turner of the uniquely talented Dr. Davis. “She was the first person that ever made me realize that I can do whatever I want to do in fashion.” “We took the culture of fashion class right before we traveled to Italy and that was really helpful. We’ve been across the world, and we’ve seen the big fashion houses, we’ve seen it thanks to her,” he continued. The TSU Fashion Society took all they’d learned and put it into the seminal event of their first semester, the April 18 TSU Fashion Show. The event was a massive undertaking but, according to Turner, simply had to happen. “It doesn’t make sense to me that TSU is so into fashion and we never had a group or a fashion show, it needed to happen,” he said. The event had it all: a runway; lighting; music from a DJ; models; photographers; stylists; even vendors. Running from 5:30 to 7 p.m. on the evening of the 18th, the event was well-received by the students crowding around the amphitheater for the proceedings. And while late rain did dampen the mood towards the end of the show, the hard work Gillum, Turner and the Society’s leadership put in to the event paid off.