Passion and Good Fortune!
I have been very fortunate to follow my passion for my entire career! I grew up in Oakes, North Dakota, a small town of 2000 where everyone knew everyone else, or so it seemed. I am the oldest daughter of NDSU graduates from the classes of 1938 and 1939. My father owned and operated Sanders Rexall Drug and my mother had been a home economics teacher in Watford City and Bismarck prior to marriage and raising a family.
At NDSU, I began as a home economics education major, but changed after my sophomore fall quarter (a little trouble with organic chemistry!) to fashion merchandising. Miss Emily Reynolds (one of Mother’s classmates) was my advisor and a professor in textiles and clothing. I learned a great deal from Miss Reynolds and Mrs. Rising and Miss Hawkins. My aunt had been one of Miss Hawkins’ students, so people still knew people! As a senior I worked part-time at the Mary Elizabeth Shop (site of the HoDo Hotel) on Broadway and knew from that experience that fashion merchandising would be interesting.
A classmate in textiles and clothing, Marilyn Dean, and I flew to Washington, DC in March of our senior year for interviews in Washington, DC and in New York City for management training positions in fashion. We interviewed at Woodward and Lothrop, Garfinkel’s, Bonwit Teller, and Macy’s. New York City was fun, but we were very happy to be in Washington, DC. By the end of spring quarter, we had been hired as management trainees at Woodward and Lothrop in Washington, DC. The management trainee program at “Woodie’s” was a three-month program that provided us with experiences in all areas of the retail operation: in buying, management, display, operations. At the end of the three-month period I was assigned as an assistant department manager in Robes and Loungewear and Maternity; Daytime Dresses and Uniforms.
I worked as an assistant department manager until after I was married and decided that I wanted a position with nights and weekends free! At that point I moved into visual merchandising which meant that I “styled” the windows around the store, and the visual displays in the interior of the store. We worked with the fashion calendar and chose apparel for the seasons and colors and images that best portrayed Woodward and Lothrop. Woodrop and Lothrop was a full-line department store with branche stores in the Washington, DC area. I became fashion coordinator for the Iverson Mall branch in July and helped to open a new branch. I joined Fashion Group International in Washington,DC and heard China Machado speak. Yves St. Laurent visited Woodies while I was working there……and my friend from FIT spoke to him while the rest of us watched.
In November of the same year I left Woodies because my husband, also an NDSU graduate, had received orders for Wheelus AB in Tripoli, Libya and we choose an accompanied tour, rather then an unaccompanied tour. I spent six months in North Dakota prior to joining him in an 8’ x 35’ trailer. My days of working in retail were at an end, for the moment. However, the Department of Defense schools at Wheelus AB needed substitute teachers and I had the requisite bachelor’s degree for substitute teacher positions. I helped open the high school in the fall and discovered that I really enjoyed the classroom teaching experience.
After Wheelus we moved to Scottsdale, Arizona where my husband earned an MSE at Arizona State University and I was a fulltime wife and mother to a little boy. I explored education courses at ASU, but courses weren’t convenient to our schedule, so I didn’t pursue any coursework at ASU.
We moved to Colorado Springs, welcomed a daughter and spent more time in one location than we would until we moved to California. My husband spent a year in Thailand on an unaccompanied tour, leaving when our son was almost three and our daughter was 3 weeks old. This was an interesting year of independence, observation, and responsibility. When Darrell returned I became a Leiter’s Designer Fabric representative, working with a clientele of men and women who bought fabrics by mail, choosing from fabric samples that were 4” x 6”.
I continued this career in Alaska and California. We were stationed at Elmendorf AFB in Anchorage, Alaska for three years. During this period, I went back to school at the University of Alaska and earned a teaching credential. My master teacher at East High School in Anchorage, AK was a Leiter’s client and shared my love for fashion and textiles.
We moved to California in 1979 and I started looking for substitute teaching positions. There were many opportunities, but I wasn’t thrilled with the work. California is the land of the community college (there are 109 community colleges in California) and I began to investigate the fashion and textile teaching positions. Soon I became a “freeway flyer” teaching courses at several different colleges. A colleague recommended that I earn an MA. “ All community college teachers will need MAs,” was her comment. California State University, Long Beach was close and had a degree in fashion and textiles. My education courses helped my grade point average and I became a student, yet again.
In 1983 we moved to England for two years where my husband was an exchange officer with the British Royal Air Force and we lived with the British military. It was an amazing experience with travel, social obligations, and time to perfect fashion and textiles skills through construction, museum visits, travel, and observation.
We returned to California in 1985 and I continued my MA program, graduating in 1987. I also returned to retail in 1987, working for Nordstrom at South Coast Plaza for one and a half years. The contrast between a full-line department store in the mid-1960s and a speciality store with many stores all over the USA in the 1980s was most interesting. At Woodies, I was salaried management; at Nordstrom, I was a commissioned salesperson. The retail world is constantly evolving and so is the customer.
With my MA, I was encouraged to apply for a position at California State University, Los Angeles in the Department of Family Studies and Consumer Sciences(FSCS) as a fashion merchandising professor. They hired me and informed me that in order to attain tenure and promotion, I had to have a “terminal degree”! On to Pepperdine University where I earned a Doctor of Education degree in Institutional Management in 1996. The Fashion and Textiles Program moved from FSCS to the Department of Art in 1992 and was recognized as an official part of the department in 1994. We are 15 minutes from the heart of the west coast fashion industry in Los Angeles. Fashion and textiles is in integral part of the global economy. I have been fortunate at Cal State LA to be involved in a revised curriculum with an Art focus, an extended education certificate program for the textile industry, an Armenian Dress and Textile Project, and a three and a half month teaching sabbatical in China. I started teaching full-time in 1989 and my best teachers have always been my students!
What have I learned throughout my career?
1. Dream! I dreamed, as a young woman, about being a doctor. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that I would be a college professor with a doctorate. Jodie Foster was recently quoted as telling her children that they should consider a college education because it “was so much fun.” My four years at NDSU were the best of times. My grade point average was average, because I was having so much fun. In the additional degrees, I studied harder and received better grades.
2. Be open to all experiences! My husband was a career Air Force officer whose assignments took us to many parts of the world: Libya, Alaska, England to live, and Europe, and Thailand for travel. Living anywhere is FAR different from visiting. Getting to know the people and learning where things are and how to do anything in another culture is broadening. With regard, to the places that we lived, I am very aware that Alaska is the USA, but it is different in many ways from the “lower 48”.
My own adventure, connected with education, is China. I had wanted to go to China since I was a young child. It was another North Dakotan who offered me that opportunity while Dean of Extended Education at Cal State LA. The first trip led to the sabbatical in fall 2002 and a design dream with Chinese blue cotton. My Chinese connections continue. I have taken two groups of students to China and a group of adults and students last summer. The Silk Road and western China are on my list. I just haven’t arranged my next trip yet!
3. Adventure! Say yes to as many experiences as you possibly can. The opportunities will provide perspectives that you will never learn from “book learning” or from your professors, no matter how hard we try!
4. Cultivate an avocation, as well as a vocation. Music, both playing the piano and organ and singing, have been avocational passions since I was a child. New York City in December is powerful for fashion and textiles. Singing at Carnegie Hall under John Rutter was the reason to be in New York City to observe fashion!
5. Remain passionate and interested in life. If you discover that a job or position isn’t what you thought it was going to be, look around for possibilities that engage your passions. Life is too short to remain in mundane circumstances.
Carpe Diem!
Carol F. Tuntland, Associate Professor
Fashion and Textiles Program
Department of Art
California State University, Los Angeles
