Fashion Contest October 2010: Fashion Public Relations Book

Although the majority of contests discussed in the fashion contests group at the Fashion Industry Network were not actually sponsored by the network, the network participated on occasion - sponsoring some in full and taking part in others in a smaller way. The Fashion Contest October 2010 was one of its essay contests, and this page is its record: the subject, the winners and the prize.

The contest's subject was 'Things they never taught me in school on being successful in the Fashion Industry' - an essay prompt aimed at the gap between fashion education and fashion work, inviting entrants to write the lesson they had learned only by doing the job.

The Winners

First Prize Winner: Blondell. Second Prize Winner: Tara Davis. Honorable Mention: Sonya LaRae. The contest was organized by Apparel1 and Gerald Sherman.

The names are kept here as the contest's official result. Essay contests of this kind were the network's way of turning its members' experience into reading for the whole community: the winning answer to a question every newcomer asks - what does school not teach you about this industry - becomes guidance for everyone who arrives later with the same question.

The Prize: A Fashion Public Relations Book

The prize was the book Fashion Public Relations, by Gerald J. Sherman and Sar S. Perlman, published by Fairchild Books, a division of Conde Nast, New York, in 2010. The book has been adopted by nationally and internationally known fashion colleges and universities - a prize chosen to be used, not shelved: a working text for the public relations side of the industry the essay subject circled around.

A book prize fits an essay contest. The entrants wrote about professional knowledge; the winner took away more of it, in the form the industry itself uses to teach its students.

The Fashion Contests Group

The contest lived in the network's fashion contests group, whose purpose was to provide an area for members of the fashion industry to discuss issues relevant to fashion contests. Members could post information regarding contests they managed, contests they had entered, or simply discuss fashion contests in general - and anyone interested in fashion contests was welcome to join the discussions.

The group's later contests are recorded beside this one: the Fashion Trend Forecast 2011 essay contest followed in the same series of pages, with its official entries - forecast essays by member entrants - kept in the trend forecast entries folder described on the network's main page.

The subject chosen for October 2010 deserves its note. 'Things they never taught me in school' is the question every profession's newcomers eventually ask, and fashion - where schools teach design, construction and business but the trade runs on relationships, timing and nerve - has richer answers than most. An essay contest turned those answers into the group's shared reading, which is what a professional network's contest is for: not the prize, useful as a good book is, but the collected experience of the people who entered.