Fashion Forward
Edward Biamonte
"I spent the night in Manhattan," says Michele Granger, "and when I got home I took off my shoes and walked in the grass. And I knew my answer. I needed grass under my feet."
And that's what Michele Granger does. She's in the know. She knows what's likely to sell next season. She knows what's essential to landing that dream job in New York. She knows how important it is for even the most creative minds to be business-savvy.What she knows has helped grow the Missouri State fashion design and merchandising program from 50 students to 300 in her seven years at the university. More than 90 percent of her graduates end up in the industry, and they're working and interning for the likes of Calvin Klein, Vera Wang, Cappelli, Saks Fifth Avenue, Ralph Lauren, Betsey Johnson, Main Merchandizing and Target headquarters retail operations.
She is a petite woman with red hair, a warm smile and a deceivingly fresh, young face. Some people omit energy. The middle-aged Granger is in their company. "Please, don't say how old I am," she says, laughing. "I've been lying for too long."
As 417-land's outlet to the fashion industry, people are listening to what Granger knows. She helped Meghan Stack of the trend-attentive Staxx retail store in downtown Springfield with her business plan. She has written four textbooks under Fairchild Publications (which also puts out style bibles Women's Wear Daily and Details) and has a fifth on the way. Her books are used at the worshipped fashion schools of Parsons, Fashion Institute of Technology, London College of Fashion and at the Rhode Island School of Design.
These days, as head of the department of the applied consumer sciences (an umbrella over clothing, textiles and merchandizing, housing and interior design, hospitality and restaurant administration, plus family and consumer science education), Granger spends more time on big-picture items than in the classroom.
["Her trifecta of industry connections, buyer experience and fashion intuition seems to help her provide her students with the right tools."]
"She was very inspiring," says Jillian Lemaster, who graduated from Missouri State in 2003 and now works for Capelli in New York. "She talked with such enthusiasm. You could see the knowledge and the experience. She clearly knows what it was like to be in the fashion industry, to work in it. You really felt like you were learning from someone that had been there."
Granger began her career as a buyer for Adlers in Kansas City in 1975, after graduating with a dual degree in fashion design and business administration from Central Missouri State in Warrensburg. She worked her way up the buyer ladder during her nearly 10 years of employment with Adlers, ending as a merchandizing manager, where she over saw a majority of the store's buyers.
In the mid-'80s, a want for more education called, and she headed to the University of Missouri to begin her master's in apparel management with an emphasis in business.
Things lined up in just the proper fashion to stick her in Columbia while Stephens College was looking for a suitable candidate to launch its fashion-merchandising program. As program director of fashion merchandizing, she juggled a full-time professorship at Stephens and classes as a student at MU. Granger took five years to finish her master's. The year of completion, she was promoted to department head at Stephens.
Making it in the Midwest
Born in Syracuse, New York, Granger moved frequently as a result of her father's position as an Air Force officer. In her high school years, the family transferred to Whiteman Air Force base in Knob Noster. Granger loved the area, which led her to CMS. It's suspected that this love for the region is what has kept her in Springfield as she gets flashier offers.In 1998, Granger was flown to New York, where she took an elevator up a high-rise building to sit in front of 16 people and interview for a divisional dean position at FIT-her ultimate dream job.
"I spent the night in Manhattan, [my daughter] was 9 or 10 at the time, and when I got home I took off my shoes and walked in the grass. And I knew my answer. I needed the grass under my feet, and I needed my child to grow up playing in the grass. That thought of living in a concrete city wasn't imaginable. I got the dream job, or what I thought was the dream job, and made the choice."
Springfield, she says, is the best place to raise a family. In her cul-de-sac, her neighbors are extended family, and at Missouri State her co-workers are extended family. She hasn't seen that kind of camaraderie anywhere else she's lived or worked.
While she was finishing her dissertation for her doctorate in higher education from Florida-based Nova Southeastern University's extended network program, she decided to go on sabbatical from Stephens to write one of her books. She then got a call from a professor from what was then Southwest Missouri State University. She could, if she wanted, commute and teach a couple of days a week in Springfield.
"I needed interaction with people," Granger says, who had moved to a rural area near the Lake of the Ozarks with her daughter, Annie. "I'd go to the grocery store just to talk to the cashiers."
Annie is now 18, and Granger has of course moved to Springfield and switched to a full-time position at Missouri State. But she's not chained to her desk.
Each summer Granger takes 14 students to Paris for a two-week study program. Annie, who speaks fluent French, often accompanies the crew and helps the newbies get around Paris. "My father is French," Granger says. "I was raised in a house where half the family spoke French. France reminds me of love. There are so many places to go and things to do. It opens [the students'] eyes to looking at the fashion industry globally. I've had some students whose first plane ride was to Paris. Most have never been out of the country." During the two-week excursion, the group has about 30 appointments to see designers, retailers and landmarks. "We always meet in the morning for breakfast," Granger says. "At least I know they're getting one good meal a day. They'll spend all their money on clothes."
When we spoke, Granger had just returned from her summer stint in Europe. After Paris, she continued with another mother-daughter pair to Italy, where Granger hopes to begin taking students. The conversation continually referred back to her trip. Through her stories, her love for the aesthetic becomes increasingly obvious. Listening to Granger, it seems fashion is many things. It is a sixth sense, it is a business, and it is an art. Fashion has a personality, a fluid nature, and at times, predictable tendencies. Style, she says, cannot be taught. But through travel-that shares art, the industry and culture-a student's eye can develop.
Long-time friend Melody Edmundson, now retired, worked as a buyer, merchandizing manager and product developer in Kansas City, Chicago and New York. She says she's had merchants from New York quote from Granger's books. This past year, Edmunson traveled to Springfield to judge Missouri State's annual fashion show. "I just think Michele Granger is just so passionate about her work, and you can't fight with that," Edmundson says, "She's walked the walk, and she talked the talk. She is very generous. Everything she knows she gives to her students and the entire school. She's very big-picture. There isn't anything in the whole Midwest that can compare to that fashion department."
Granger stays connected with the industry by maintaining the relationships she made as a buyer and by traveling. Granger's fifth text presents career options in fashion. (Her books are as much about the real-world practicality of the business of fashion as they are about fashion.)
"When you're as old as I am, you know a lot of people," Granger says. "You ask them what they are looking for in a portfolio. You need to know how you're going to stand out. Our students could do stationary, glasswear, home furnishings, be buyers, designers but, if you don't have the business side, you won't be able to make
it to the creative part, the fun part. Business feeds the bank. The business empowers you."
Granger isn't an elitist who believes fashion only exists in Paris and New York, but a lot of it is outside of Springfield. The Missouri State University program sponsors trips annually to Kansas City, Dallas and Chicago. To keep her students in the know, she has arranged for online subscriptions to Women's Wear Daily and for industry-leading software such as U4IA, which is a textile design drawing tool. She is also a never-ending cheerleader for hands-on experience. "I really believe in internships," Granger says. "It just turns on the light when you see how to use it. It just makes you hungry for more."
When Springfield seems like an impossible springboard for a fashion career, Granger helps students see how it's possible to make it even with rural southwest Missouri roots. She may be a cheerleader-but she has facts to back up her enthusiasms. "Twenty-four [students] went on our New York trip this year, and 10 came back with internships," Granger says. "These companies can hire from the top fashion schools in New York. Many times our students are hired over those students. They're prepared and have a phenomenal work ethic. And that's what I noticed when I first came here."
Granger doesn't fit in a box. Some predictable fashionista traits exist, but other qualities emerge. She not only emphasizes the importance of business, but also needs time to sew or paint to keep her creative side fed. She loves cities and cherishes our lakes in 417-land.
And the way it looks now, she'll be here offering her expertise for some time.
