There has long been debate on whether fashion is art.
Charleston native Caroline Rose Kaufman may help settle the matter with her selection as a 2014 Windgate Fellow for her fiber and textile designs.
The award topped a big week for the young designer as she graduated from college and had her fashion show featured in Women’s Wear Daily and Style.com.
The 22-year-old Kaufman graduated May 16 from the celebrated Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York with a bachelor of fine arts in fashion design and a minor in art history.
“Art was always my biggest passion and interest. I don’t know how I got started in fashion. It was just something I felt I wanted to do and it felt like the right match. I have a strong background of loving fabrics and textures, loving fashion and loving clothing,” Kaufman said in a recent telephone interview from her home in Brooklyn, NY.
Her mother is renowned West Virginia Artist Barrie Kaufman, and her father is Kanawha County Circuit Judge Tod Kaufman.
The prestigious fellowship is awarded to ten graduating university seniors considered to be emerging craft artists. Each Windgate Fellow receives $15,000 — one of the largest awards offered nationally to art students — through the Center for Craft, Creativity & Design (CCCD).
“The Windgate Fellowship program identifies the best emerging craft artists in the field through the nation’s premier university programs,” said Stephanie Moore, Executive Director of CCCD.
Four judges reviewed a national pool of 112 applicants on the basis of artistic merit and the potential of each applicant to make significant contributions to the field of craft.
The Wingate Fellowship is traditionally awarded to students in a variety of mediums, including ceramics, glass, sculpture, wood, furniture, jewelry, photography, mixed media, printmaking, textiles and metalsmithing according to its listing of past award winners at craftcreativitydesign.org.
“It’s all art and design. I might be one of the first fashion people to win it. It’s cool to come in from a fashion and textile perspective and have clothing seen as art and to have my designs being shown next to fine art and design. This is special to me,” Kaufman said about being selected as a Windgate Fellow.
“Eleven out of 90 Windgate Fellowship recipients have worked or are working in the fields of fiber or textile arts and design. While this may seem like a small percentage, it is significant considering the study and acceptance of textiles — outside of the realm of utilitarian or domestic products — is relatively new in universities, compared to more traditional programs like ceramics, metals and glass,” said Moore of the CCCD.
“We are seeing more Windgate Fellowship recipients with backgrounds in fashion design, such as Madeline Provost of Parsons New School (2013) and Caroline Kaufman of Pratt Institute (2014). There is no denying that craft is gaining popularity in the industry,” she added.
Kaufman proudly announces on her website carolinerosekaufman.com that she is a West Virginian: “I was born and raised in West Virginia, the quilting and craft epicenter of America. I learned from a young age that clothing could be a canvas for tactile exploration and that the power of a garment made by hands celebrated ancestry, story telling and the art of the three-dimensional form.”
She writes on her webpage: “I am enamored by the tradition that is associated with handmade clothing — the art of passing down wearable craft from generation to generation… I love to explore, examine, wander and find. I enjoy the beauty of great things, but am most fascinated by the quirks of small treasures. My designs are based on found beauty in awe inspiring nature, revealing the extraordinary in the handmade and imperfect.”
The designer said that her work celebrates and examines “small scale human craft” through a whimsical childlike perspective.
“I think fashion design is such a unique discipline and career choice. I was drawn to it because it covers design and technical craft and it combines all these different components. My work is all one of a kind, being handmade and handcrafted,” she said.
“For me, it was making lots of art that led me to this. So my advice is to keep making art. There are lots of skills and techniques to learn to design fashion… sewing, knitting, weaving. I feel fortunate to have gone to Pratt. To find your place in any artistic discipline, it takes a lot of work and a lot of passion,” Kaufman said about pursuing any type of art as a career.
Throughout her four years of studies at the Pratt Institute, she was on the dean’s list and president’s list. In 2012, she was a national winner of the Young Menswear Association (YMA) Fashion Scholarship Fund.
“I will use the Windgate Fellowship grant monies to continue to make work, take classes and workshops, and keep investigating different textile techniques. I’d like to set up a studio. It’s been a really good year. From my fashion show last week, I was featured in Women’s Wear Daily and Style.com. My biggest goal is to keep getting things out there.”
“The garment district in New York City is probably — as a main resource — why I am in NY and why I will most likely stay in NY for next year. I lived in London last year and there wasn’t nearly the textile variety there.”
Kaufman has worked as a design intern for Anthropologie in Philadelphia, Carleen in Brooklyn and Cristina Sabaiduc in London, United Kingdom while pursuing her studies at the Pratt Institute.
She lists her professional skills as pattern making, draping, sample sewing, hand knitting, textile design, fashion illustration, print design and collage.
Kaufman had this advice for people wanting to pursue a career in the fashion industry: “Be kind to everyone you meet and take advantage of every opportunity big or small that comes your way. Those two things have pretty much gotten me where I am today.”
Reach Judy E. Hamilton at judy.hamilton@wvgazette.com or 304-348-1230.
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