Senior Sierra Cook spends the majority of her days as an apparel, merchandising, design and textiles major in the studio working on patterns and sewing clothing.

For her and other AMDT majors, the annual Mom’s Weekend fashion show has become the finale for apparel design students and a chance to showcase everything they have learned in their classes.

“The fashion show is a capstone project for the students in the design program,” said Karen Leonas, department chairwoman of apparel, merchandising, design and textiles. “It is a culmination of everything they’ve learned in the three years they’ve been here.” The fashion show requires senior design students to find or create patterns for the clothing they want their models to be adorned in, and then decide what type of textile, or fabric, would be best suited for that design.

Then the students have to piece together the chosen textiles to fit their pattern and their models.

“I’m in a pre-development fashion show class,” Cook said. “I’m working here from seven in the morning till 10 or 12 at night, and sometimes I stay till two or three.” Other AMDT majors do not have to spend this amount of time working on a single project.

About 30 to 35 percent of them are going into apparel design and the other 65 to 70 percent focus on apparel merchandising, Leonas said.

“I am looking more into the buyer part of it where you go in and buy brands for department stores,” sophomore apparel merchandising major Breanna Houmard said.

The two separate focuses are really not that different because each student has to learn about all aspects of the other subject, Cook said.

“We teach the concept of consumers and (the program) focuses on the design, the production, the distribution, and the marketing of textile and apparel products,” Leonas said. “We’re basically involved in all parts of the chain from concept to consumer.” Classes include fashion forecasting, courses specifically aimed at textiles, and computer classes about apparel design.

The program is really difficult to get into, Leonas said.

The competition level is high because of what AMDT majors face once they leave college.

Sierra Cook went to New York City last year to learn about the business and learned daunting news about the availability of design jobs.

“Most of the time you start as an assistant and you work your way up,” Cook said. “(The guide) said there are 50,000 design majors graduating and only 8,000 jobs. There’s a lot of competition for the jobs because they are creative.” Students graduating from WSU with a degree in AMDT can also earn a masters degree in Pullman, but must attend a different university to receive a doctorate.

All of the nine faculty members and one temporary faculty member hold Ph.D.s in their field.

“We have active research that the faculty participates in,” Leonas said. “We look at the economic impact on Washington and the country. We look at things to do with international business.” Leonas specifically researches dissolvable textiles used for medical stitches that will hopefully reduce surgical site infections.

“A lot of what we do in research reflects the need of the market right now,” she said.

Everyone involved in the major, faculty included, spent a vast amount of time working on projects and research, but most are content with the final products of their labor.

“I’m doing a lot of work for (my classes) but it’s really rewarding because you can see your work,” Cook said. “I do know that I want to go into costuming. I’ve been dancing since I was two years old. I would love (to do) that because when I was younger I used to want to get involved with it.”