Designers 3 & 4

Scarlet Wesley

Scarlet has been teaching at UK for 10 years. She teaches Merchandising Apparel and Textiles, which is when you take product from start to finish and see how it sells. She also teaches Brand Management and Color Theory, which is how colors mean different things. When she isn't teaching she is focuses on advising or studying abroad. In fact,  Scarlet just came back from a spring break trip to Paris with students. She has been leading the study abroad in merchandising for 4 years. I actually gave our professor my contact information to forward to Scarlet because I am extremely interested in joining her on her trip to Paris next spring! 

As Scarlet shared her stories with us, she explained that it has been quite the journey getting where she is today. When she married her husband, they moved to Connecticut and she took a job with Lego. After working there for awhile and learning so much about one of the leading toy companies, they moved to South Carolina where she took a teaching job. This is when Scarlet began to travel overseas to get a feel for the fashion industry. After awhile all Scarlet wanted to do was be closer to her family in Tennessee so she took a job with UK. 

She spoke in detail about her trips with students to Paris. The Paris trips give students the opportunity to meet designers, see couture made fabric (one of a kind handmade fabric), visit Gucci small goods leather factory and watch how handmade Gucci shoes are made. They also visit Florence, the leather capital of the world. 

Scarlet was also thrilled to talk to us about fabric designing software. She uses this software while teaching. The software gives students the opportunity to create goods and sell them in the UK Bookstore and around the city of Lexington. All the money that UK receives from selling these goods goes to students who need funding to study abroad. 

She closed her speech by talking to us about the Buy It Now concept. This is when designers launch new lines and immediately let consumer purchase these items. Usually, big designers will launch their lines 6 months in advance before it can be purchased in stores. Lately, consumers have been itching to get their hands on merchandise immediately. When retailers provide this buy it now concept, sales skyrocket! 

“Everyone can have a great idea as far as design goes. This changed the way I looked at the world, " said Scarlet.

Ebrahim Poustinchi

Ebrahim went to the University of Iran and did his post grad at UCLA focusing on robotic architecture and design. After UCLA, Ibrahim traveled to Washington State University then headed to UK. It was here that he focused mainly on design that is driven by computing. 

He shared his website link and showed us several pieces of his work. He first showed us posters and advertisements he did in Iran, which got him nominated for awards. He then showed us projects like Amethyst Cluster, Robobble, a project done with Washington State University and 4D Graphics, a branding/advertising project.

In the last section of his speech, Ebrahim had us guess which projects were products of UCLA students, Washington State University students or UK students. He was so proud that both UCLA and UK post-grad students had incredible works, even if they had such different backgrounds and less years of experience. 

Ultimately, Ebrahim is shocked every day that his students he reaches who have no software background create such amazing work with beautiful colors and brilliant ideas!