Episode 13
Fashion as Creative Problem-Solving w/ Ashley Brooks and Donna Ricco
The episode kicks off with Mac, David and Lindsay discussing their own senses of fashion (or, lack thereof). They raise riveting questions including: does owning cufflinks make one fashionable? Lindsay recounts the way her style has not evolved—and looks back on her first day of Kindergarten, to which she wore a plum power suit.
Guests Ashley Brooks and Donna Ricco join around 13:40. Ashley Brooks is the chair of the Fashion Department at Mount Mary University. Previously, she led design and art teams for children’s, juniors and women’s clothing at Kohl’s, and worked at Saks Fifth Ave and the VF Corporation. Donna Ricco is an Executive Fellow at Mount Mary, she is also an alum of Mount Mary University, and started and led her own brand: Donna Ricco New York.
During the conversation, they reflect on fashion design as both a creative and pragmatic enterprise, and an industry with many career paths. They speak about the origins of the MM Fashion Program, which began in the 1960’s under the leadership of Sister Aloyse. Milwaukee’s place in the fashion industry at that time was buoyed by a diversity of manufacturing outlets that were based in the region, and Milwaukee's history as a tanning center and fur trading outpost. The Milwaukee of today does not have the same diversity of manufacturing expertise needed to support a large-scale fashion industry—but the graduates of the program are eking out new niches through creative collaborations, as part of their participation in a wider artistic ecosystem. “Designers can’t cut it on their own,” as Ricco says. Many fashion puns are woven into the conversation.
Mount Mary will host the CREO Fashion Show: Prismatic Parallel, at 3pm and 7 pm in Notre Dame Hall on Saturday, May 14.
Learn more about the Mount Mary’s Creative Campus and the 2022 CREO Fashion Show: Prismatic Parallel on 5/14
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