Designer Dreams

He’s an anonymous employee in the Irvine pattern room of St. John who dreams of becoming a fashion designer. Someday people may recognize his name, Franco Bernal, the way they recognize Calvin Klein. Someday they might even wear Franco Bernal underwear.

Those who want a career as a fashion designer are often seduced by the glamorous image of designers they see on TV, magazines and movies. Many picture themselves fitting supermodels into their fabulous creations, accepting applause and bouquets on the runway and dictating with their sketch pads the next big fashion trend.

That few of them will ever make it into the pantheon of big name designers, and that the lucky ones who do usually pay their dues toiling for years in production rooms, are just a couple of the hard lessons local fashion schools try to impress upon their starry-eyed charges.

Bernal, a 23-year-old Aliso Viejo resident, encountered plenty of designer wannabes with grand expectations as a student at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising (FIDM) in Costa Mesa.

“A lot of students go into school because they see ads of Calvin Klein and Donna Karan and they think that’s how it will be. They’re doing it for fame and money,” he says. “They expect to be famous by the time they’re 35. It’s not like that.”

Bernal graduated from the fashion institute in 1995 after learning fundamental skills such as pattern-making, sketching and production. He now makes patterns for St. John and is being trained as a production supervisor. He knows it could be years before he lands a position as a designer.

“This is where I’ll be for a while,” he says. “The experience will make me a better, more realistic designer.”

Unlike Bernal, many students enter fashion school thinking it’s a short leap from graduation to the runways of Milan and Paris.

“They all want to be Yves Saint Laurent,” says Doris Fuqua, coordinator of the Fashion Careers Program at Fullerton College. “Most of them want to start out designing ball gowns or creative club wear.”

While not dashing their dreams, instructors try to prepare students for the realities of the job market, to show them that only a fortunate few make the pages of Vogue.

“We do our best to introduce reality. But if they don’t want to hear it, maybe it’s a good thing. They might reach a little further,” Fuqua says. “We don’t want to play God, and some students you wouldn’t think make it, do. Determination can be more important than talent.”

Mika Yamamura, a first-year student at FIDM, says she has had a “passion for fashion” since she was old enough to make clothes for her Barbie.

“I want to design ready-to-wear like Donna Karan and Cynthia Rowley. She’s my idol,” says the 19-year-old Costa Mesa resident.

Yamamura isn’t likely to settle for a career as a pattern-maker:

“I want to start my own business. I don’t take authority well. Maybe I’ll start out making little bags, then progress to shirts and pants and build from there,” she says. “It’s so amazing to dream something up and then actually make it.”

Many students are motivated by the success stories that fashion schools share with recruits about star graduates.

Among the alumni who have attended FIDM, which also has campuses in San Francisco, San Diego and L.A.: Karen Kane, now head of her multimillion dollar women’s line; Randolph Duke, designer for Halston; Ha Nguyen, a costume designer whose credits include “The Mask” and “The Nutty Professor”; and Mission Viejo resident Jason Rodgers, a recent grad who has already created a collection for the Giorgio boutique in Beverly Hills.

Whenever possible, schools invite alumni and successful designers to visit and serve as role models.

Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles enlisted 23 fashion designers, including “Dynasty” costumer Nolan Miller, swimsuit designer Robin Piccone and Marie and Kelly Gray of St. John, to serve as critics and student mentors for its annual awards fashion show Saturday. The event was a posh black-tie dinner held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel that gives the school’s top students a chance to show their work and enjoy a bit of the glamour they hope awaits them after graduation.

Such fashion shows, the students soon learn, make up only a tiny part of the designer’s job.

“Students need to know what it takes to be a designer. Some do come in thinking that all they’re going to do is draw pretty pictures,” says Connie Amaden-Crawford, a teacher with FIDM for 22 years. Amaden-Crawford has held all kinds of positions in the industry, from pattern-maker to designer.

“They don’t realize how intense it really is. They have to know every level of the design room--how to make a pattern, how fabric is fitted on live models, what production does. These are aspects that aren’t taught at home economics.”

Such skills not only help students become designers, they also prepare them for other types of fashion careers. Many graduates go on to creative, well-paying behind-the-scenes jobs, such as pattern and sample makers.

“They come into the career class and when we ask them, ‘What’s your goal?’ they all want to be fashion designers. We say, ‘OK, but let me tell you about 30 other jobs in fashion,’ ” says Chris Amaral, program coordinator of the fashion department at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa.

“They don’t realize there are trim buyers, pattern-makers, sample makers and something called quality control. One of our graduates who wanted to be a bridal designer ended up being a trim buyer for Billabong and loves it,” she says. “There are other jobs, and they are rewarding.”

To show students the real world of fashion, instructors take them on field trips to places such as St. John or the California Mart, where they can talk to people working in the industry. They also place students in internships at local clothing companies.

“That gives them the reality [of the business]. They can’t fool themselves at that point,” Fuqua says.

Those internships often lead to full-time jobs. Trisha Valenzuela, 29, graduated from Orange Coast in 1992 and began working as an intern for Billabong in Costa Mesa; she’s now a pattern-maker there.

“When you’re in school you think you’ll be a designer. You’re not aware of all the other jobs out there,” Valenzuela says. “For me, it’s turned out great. The money is good, and it’s creative.”

Orange County offers lots of opportunities for launching a fashion career. While few companies are turning out ball gowns, the area is home to many surf and sportswear companies that hire graduates. Some work at Quiksilver, Wet Seal, Mossimo and Billabong, starting in pattern-making or in the production room and working their way up. Average entry-level salaries are about $20,000, teachers say.

The technical skills and industry contacts that students acquire at fashion school help them break into the business, but such advantages have a price. Tuition, especially at private schools, does not come cheap.

FIDM’s two-year program costs about $14,000 a year. Tuition at Otis costs about $15,000 annually; it offers a three-year program to get a bachelor’s degree in fashion design. Financial aid and scholarships help many students pick up the tab.

“Tuitions are high, and it’s expensive to maintain classwork. The schools are active at recruiting, and many students don’t know what they’re getting into,” Fuqua says.

Those uncertain of their career choice are better off experimenting at a public school, she says. Fullerton College, Saddleback College in Mission Viejo and Orange Coast have comparatively low tuitions but sometimes lack the high-profile industry contacts, prestige or sophisticated computer equipment of a private school.

To get an associate of arts degree from Fullerton College, students pay $13 a unit; a full-time student averages 12 to 15 units a semester for the two-year program.

Joanne Cruz, 21, a San Gabriel Valley resident and a junior fashion design major at Otis, figures her private school education costs approximately $20,000 a year in tuition and supplies, a sum she pays with the help of grants and scholarships.

“In any career there’s always risk,” she says. Cruz says she has always loved clothes and decided to become a designer while studying fashion at the Orange County High School of the Arts in Los Alamitos.

At Otis, she’s been able to work with designers from Roxy and create a junior activewear ensemble that will be modeled in the Orange County Beach Girls segment of Otis’ awards show.

“After designing activewear I realized it was something I could really do,” Cruz says. “My ultimate goal is to have my own line. I hope to be famous one day.”