Austin Incubator Helps Students Launch Fashion Businesses

AUSTIN, TX — Austin Community College District’s Fashion Incubator and Macy’s Barton Creek Square on Wednesday launched a new collaboration to help aspiring fashion designers and creative business owners explore what it takes to launch their own fashion business.

Together, the Fashion Incubator and Macy’s Barton Creek Square will offer a virtual course series called The Future of Fashion, school officials described.

The first course covers five weeks of instruction with a bonus introductory class with former President of Esprit and Calvin Klein, Edward Jones III, and other industry veterans, according to an advisory. The course is a highlight of what designers need to know in order to bring their collections to market, school officials said, with topics ranging from design, development, capital, marketing, and sales.

“The ACC Fashion Incubator is proud to partner with Macy’s on this new initiative to bring fashion business education to a diverse audience of creatives who want to see their businesses become a reality,” Nina Means, ACC Fashion Incubator director, said in a prepared statement. “ACC Fashion Incubator began with a partnership with the City of Austin and Gerber Technology to bring fashion technology and business education to the emerging design market in Central Texas. With this new virtual initiative sponsored by Macy’s, the ACC Fashion Incubator has the opportunity to expand its reach even further.”

Rick Gabriel, store manager at Macy’s Barton Creek Square, initiated the engagement for partnership in 2019. School officials said he saw the potential of supporting a new program that closely aligned with Macy’s values of supporting their local community in a way that promotes diversity and inclusion.

“Diversity and inclusion are essential to Macy’s culture and core values,” Gabriel said in a prepared statement. “We’re proud to support ACC’s Fashion Incubator program in its efforts to prepare aspiring designers and established entrepreneurs for success through high-quality courses packed with real-to-industry content.”

This course is a pilot program to test the local market engagement through this new virtual series. The ACC Fashion Incubator originally planned to take its programming virtual in a later phase of the project. However, the presence of the pandemic accelerated the implementation of this plan.

Classes began virtually on Wednesday. For more details, visit the Fashion Incubator portal.

About Austin Community College

Austin Community College is a nationally recognized two-year college serving Central Texas. ACC is focused on student success and providing affordable, flexible pathways to help students reach their education goals, learn new job skills, or advance their career. The college currently enrolls more than 70,000 students annually.