The Business of Fashion with Gallatin Student Anthony Offiah

At NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study, students complete a self-designed curriculum under the guidance of an NYU faculty adviser. Rather than taking on traditional majors, Gallatin students create concentrations built on their unique interests. As such, they weave together coursework across NYU schools to best suit their academic and professional goals.

Anthony, a New Jersey native, is now in his third year at NYU Gallatin. He’s concentrating in techniques of fashion design, aesthetics, and fashion business. Together with his adviser, Lise Friedman, he’s tailored his educational experience to his interests. Over the years, he’s taken everything from business classes at the NYU Stern School of Business to studio art courses at the NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. What’s more, he took the highly coveted Gallatin fashion business practicum, which combines practical industry experience with rigorous academic coursework. In addition to enrolling in a diversity of classes, he created a tutorial on fashion trend forecasting. Similar to an independent study, a tutorial is a customized class conceived and designed by a small group of students.

“This program accomplishes all the things I was concerned or anxious about,” Anthony says. “There are places for me to practice my technical skills here, like Steinhardt and Tisch, and clubs and advanced fashion shows.”

For Anthony, it’s the “adaptability” of a Gallatin education that sets it apart as a place to study fashion. And he’s taken full advantage of that perk. In addition to his self-designed coursework, he spent a summer investigating the relationship between how individuals dress and their perceived societal expectations. This work was part of a Martin Luther King, Jr. Scholars Program research project titled “project: DREAMER.”

“I wanted to investigate if there was a correlation between how people dress and their identities—their background and socioeconomic status,” Anthony explains. “I also wanted to look at whether people make conscious or unconscious choices based on how other people perceive them.”

As part of his research, Anthony interviewed five subjects. He gave them personality tests, mapped their ethnographic backgrounds, and helped them imagine a “dream look.” Then, he designed and constructed that look. The study revealed surprising results.

“Even people who are super stubborn, who ‘don’t care how they dress,’ still seemed to make certain choices because of things outside themselves,” Anthony says. He used his findings to encourage his subjects to honor their authentic selves. “I didn’t want to tell anyone, ‘Now you have to go and change your entire wardrobe,’” he says. “Instead, this is about you taking up your own space. It’s about being true to who you are without the stigma of repressing certain qualities.”

Anthony stresses that fashion students at Gallatin have access to a wealth of resources to help them thrive creatively and professionally. For example, the school offers an annual fashion week (including a fashion show) and ample study abroad opportunities. Furthermore, the tight-knit student network is always available to share advice and tips on jobs and internships. And all students can utilize Gallatin’s Science Technology Arts + Creativity, an immersive learning resource that provides students with short- and long-term space, equipment, and support to pursue their interdisciplinary interests. “Whatever you’re looking for in fashion,” says Anthony, “you can either make it or find it with Gallatin.”