Founder Hiram Smith with President Barack Obama
The Fashion Lab is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing opportunities for hands-on experience and real-world exposure to the fashion and retail industry for high school students from underprivileged and/or at-risk backgrounds. Through workshops, seminars and on-site visits to the fashion workplace and marketplace, the program enhances and enriches the students’ creative talents, while allowing them to explore potential career interests in the field under the guidance of industry leaders and seasoned professionals.
Founded in early 2007 by Hiram Smith of HiramStyle, a New Orleans native and international award-winning event designer. The Fashion Lab was established in New Orleans as the nonprofit arm of FASHION ON BOURBON, a celebration of style scheduled to debut in 2009, the Fashion Lab’s pilot program proved to be an outstanding success on several levels. For young people whose lives were brutally disrupted by Hurricane Katrina, it was a highly motivating vehicle through which they were able to develop the self-esteem that comes through accomplishment—including those whose marketable design talents and fashion retail aspirations were identified and encouraged.
For the City of New Orleans and State of Louisiana, the post-Katrina cultural economy received a boost through the promotion of its emerging Fashion Industry in which the participants may well play a mutually rewarding part in the future as premier designers or retailers.
Targeted schools are in the Greater New Orleans Area. Plans are in place to facilitate 12 Seminars featuring industry leaders, Celebrities and Special Guest, ongoing curriculum workshops, boot camps , field trips, domestic and international travel. The primary purpose of these educational meetings are to focus on Fashion and Retail opportunities in which we service approximately 300 students, educating them about Fashion, Retail and the Economy: providing exposure to Retail and Fashion entities.
This years program’s launch featured the fashion mogul Russell Simmons, chairman and founder of Rush Communications. Buoyed by this success, the Fashion Lab team has initiated plans to build upon the New Orleans model to establish programs in selected cities across the country.
