Students were able to find cute fall pieces for their closet at FIA’s Fashion Fair today. USC students founded FIA, or the Fashion Industry Association, to help style enthusiasts find community on campus.
Former president and now vendor, Tobi, shared more about FIA’s founding at USC and his clothing brand, Don’t Shoot. The inspiration behind his clothing brand came from his concern about how gun violence puts all Americans at risk.
Tobi: I used to be president of this club and when we started it, it was a very small thing with only a few vendors. And now there’s so many vendors coming from different areas and late in the day gets like really packed and busy. So I’m happy it’s, it’s still going on. And then on top of that, I’m happy that I have clothes to sell and stuff like that and just like can be back on campus. See my, my baby kind of function.
Tobi started Don’t Shoot after being one of the creators of FIA on campus. Current co-president Simone Brown shared that she is excited for the exposure that today’s fashion fair provided to local vendors and designers.
Simone Brown: They we had about 400 people in attendance for the show last year. So that’s a lot of eyes on their pieces and someone following their social media, all of that kind of thing. And then here that is definitely exposure but also sales. So, we’re able to we’ve talked to a lot of our vendors who say that they have a pretty good rate of sale here on campus.
Local vendor and owner of Sari Pinx, Kevin Mendoza, gave more insight about what makes his curated vintage clothing brand special.
Kevin Mendoza: Honestly, it’s like one of those like one stop shops. Like we have everything from every style, like anything dainty goth, like, uh, tops, bottoms, mini dresses, anything that you really need jackets like whether you’re someone who dresses more androgynous or someone who is more like, you know, want to stay cute, very like, coquette, girly kind of things.
Fellow Trojan, Kevin Rome, raved about cost efficient friendly deals from the local vendor, Conversation Pieces.
Kevin Rome: Well, first thing in common is they have a $10 rack. And so that was obviously like I had to go to the ten to look at because that’s where the best stuff is. But then also, like after I started like browsing around and I found like these cool patchwork pieces that I really like, interesting and like, you could tell put a lot of work into.
USC Freshman Alex Gechwill thought the FIA Fashion Fair was a great alternative in helping support local vendors and designers instead of purchasing fashions from mainstream retailers.
Alex Gechwill: it’s hard to find local vendors if you don’t know about them. So, we’re able to collectively put all of them in one place is really awesome. And then it allows students to be able to like support local businesses rather than like super mainstream.
Local vendors and designers get to help us be cute and fashionable as we are just getting well into fall semester.
For Annenberg Media, I’m Kaleef Starks.