Name: Jessica Bachansingh
Year: Sophomore
Hometown: Jacksonville, FL
Relationship Status: Single
Major: Retail Merchandising and Product Development
Minors: Entrepreneurship and Business
Taking the fashion world by storm, Jessica Bachansingh is a lot more than just your average fashion major. From starting her own sewing program in Ethiopia to winning coveted scholarships, Jessica embodies what it means to be a #GirlBoss.
Her Campus (HC): You’re a member of AATCC, one of FSU’s fashion clubs on campus, and act as co-PR Chair. Can you tell us a little more about your role in AATCC?
Jessica Bachansingh(JB): So, I just got PR Chair this semester! As co-PR Chair, I work to make fliers for the club – all the fliers for our events, meetings, anything you see on Facebook was made by either me or the other PR Chair. We do a lot of scheduling of events and we are starting a new events committee to help plan more things and get members involved in planning more things too. It’s really all about making the club known through fliers, social media, reaching out to our teachers as well as reaching out amongst our peers in the fashion major.
HC: Obviously fashion plays an important role in your life. How has fashion impacted your life and your plans for the future?
JB: I always used to play dress-up in my mom and dad’s closet and I would literally come out with a feather boa, my dad’s tie and a robe. Ever since then, I just always loved clothes. As I started becoming a teenager, I enjoyed shopping with my friends on the weekend. You know those middle schoolers that would walk around the mall? Yeah, that was me (haha). I had a lot of clothes and just got them all at good deals. So, at one point, I opened up my own “Jessica Foundation” where I basically put all the clothes that I didn’t want anymore in this box and my friends would come and shop it. It was just passing my clothes on to my friends, but I called it my foundation. That basically started my love of fashion. But really, I loved putting together outfits. What made me pursue fashion as a major was when I went to this art institute fashion camp and it was like a trial of their program for a week over the summer. We got to make an outfit out of recycled materials and we got to do trend boards, which is when you work with different color swatches, and technical flats, which is the coloring book, 2D image of a shirt. The theme for that week was Alice in Wonderland and some girls only did one tiny trend with a couple swatches, but I did like six and I was working on Photoshop. So, I really went above and beyond! It was my first taste of fashion in a more tangible world, rather than just looking at clothes at the mall. After that week, I loved it and it just made me want to pursue this major.
HC: You were just awarded a $5000 scholarship at the YMA Fashion Scholarship Fund in New York City. What did you do to earn such an incredible scholarship?
JB: Our faculty sends us emails all the time of scholarships for our major because it’s not like you’ll find a specific scholarship just for fashion. Freshman year, I would always look at the emails and it would be like two weeks from the deadline and I would just think that it was too much work. I work for RMPD doing office work and one day I decided to look into the scholarships when I had free time and I just thought, “Hey, I could do this.” There was an information session for the YMA scholarship that the Career Center held and the woman that is the representative for our school, Nancy McKay, works for NEST Fragrances and sits on the board of the YMA. She basically talked about the YMA and sold me on wanting to do this scholarship. The YMA Fashion Scholarship puts out a case study that is different every year. You have to respond to the case study with a ten-page paper, but there are different ways you can approach it – a business, marketing or analytical approach. The case study was that Etsy was collaborating with Macy’s and Macy’s Herald Square in New York was going to open up their own Etsy pop-up store with some Etsy vendors’ products. The case was that you had to identify the end consumer of that store and kind of do a whole analysis of whether it would be good or bad as well as what the benefits would be and address that to that customer. Everyone had to do that part and then you approached it from whatever side you chose. I approached it from the design side, which I found to be a little bit easier because I have sold my own stuff on Etsy and that’s just what made me feel comfortable with that part of it. What I did was a bags and accessories line that had a travel theme and each of the bags and accessories had three prints – the map print of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the subway. This was all hypothetical, so I said that it was made of 100% recycled material and I had to make a tag, a label and basically brand it. The reasoning behind my idea was that I identified the consumer as a millennial, but also as someone who is a tourist and wanted to remember their trip to New York. I knew how to do almost everything, but I wasn’t too sure on how to get this idea into a digital image. I reached out to my product development professor, Dr. Ridgeway, and she helped guide me by telling me to sketch out each of the products. Of course, I’m not an expert drawer, but she said to look at something online and try my best. Once I sketched them, I scanned the images and from that she was able to turn it into a digital image and fill it out through Illustrator. Without her, I would’ve been totally lost. I worked on that for at least a month and it really all paid off.
HC: Wow! So, what was it like when you found out you won the scholarship?
JB: When I got this scholarship, I was taking my finals and freaked out! It was good news to go home to after the break. I plan on using the $5000 from the scholarship to study abroad for a Global Merchandising Program that’s part of the fashion major. YMA also basically puts you on top, like if you have this on your resumé, it’s going to the top of the pile and I just thought, “Wow, I’m so glad I got this!” This also kind of reassured me that I chose that right major. I went to New York in January for it and there was a gala dinner. Some people that were high in the industry were there, like the CEO of JCPenney, buyers from here and there and celebrities like Kellan Lutz, who presented the higher scholarships, as well as Michael Strahan. With YMA, the next year you can compete for the Jeffrey Bean scholarship, which is a higher scholarship that they pick one person from each school to compete for. I’ll have to do another case study like the one I did before and they pick at least nine finalists from a certain number of schools, so it’s a smaller pool of people. If you’re a finalist, some girls got up to $10,000 to $30,000 in scholarship money, which is a lot! I even talked to the winner of the award last year and she encouraged me to apply for the scholarship and even offered to help me if I have any questions or need anything.
HC: While you were in NYC you also represented FSU at the National Retail Federation (NRF) Student Program and Big Show. Could you tell us a little more about that?
JB: Yeah! So, I got the Rising Star Scholarship to represent FSU. I filled out a little application, which was only for freshmen and sophomores, through the faculty and they read through a couple applications to see who they thought would represent FSU well through their program. They picked me and that allowed me to be fully funded to go to New York with them and to the NRF Student Program and the Big Show, which is a huge conference and expo. The Big Show deals with retail, innovation and anything that is coming up in the industry. We went to that on Sunday, but two days before we went to the Student Program, where people from the industry talk and they have a mentor experience. It was great because it was all for students, which is good to network with others. There was also an internship fair similar to the one that they hold on campus, but this one was better in the sense that there were higher internship positions for buying and merchandising. When they come to Tallahassee, they typically just offer store management positions and not those coveted positions that they have in New York. Personally, I want to go into the “give back” side of the industry and I tend to use the words philanthropic fashion or ethical fashion. When I say philanthropic or ethical fashion, I mean like items that are made that are giving back to a cause or made by an artisan in another country. Sustainability is also a big deal in the industry, since the fashion industry is like the number two polluter of the world. If you think of all the fabric waste and all the water pollution that is involved with the dyeing processes, it’s bad. FSU offers a sustainability discussion class that I’m currently enrolled in and we talk about these issues every day. So at the internship fair, I would go up to these companies and ask, “Do you guys have any sustainability internships or jobs” and “What are you guys doing as a company to promote sustainable, or ethical, fashion?” Most companies, when they talk about sustainability, just mention how all their factories are up to standards and how they recycle at the office, which is basically just following labor laws. I want to be able to work for a company that is innovative, like a B-Corporation (Benefit Corporation), which focuses on being socially responsible for their employees as well as the environment. I want to intern for a B-Corp and soak up as much as I can on how to run a “give back” company as well as walk away from that experience and be able to do it on my own.
Courtesy: Jessica Bachansingh
HC: On top of these great accomplishments, you started a sewing program in a school in Africa, which is so cool! What made you start it to begin with?
JB: My project is called “Gifts for Confidence” and the idea behind that is that the sewing machines were gifts that the girls could use to make something that made them feel confident as well as making a product that you can buy to make someone else feel confident. This basically started when I was a Girl Scout. When you get high up in Girl Scouts, you go for your Gold Award, which is where you must do a service project that is all on your own, be up to 80 hours of community service, serve a cause but also something that is sustainable and have a lasting impact. I knew I wanted to do something that had to do with fashion and something that was international. I sat down with a woman named Ms. Courtney, who started a nonprofit called Love for Ethiopia. Her story is that she adopted her son from Ethiopia about eight or nine years ago and felt that she needed to do more for that country. She partnered with another nonprofit called Elpis and they started a school in Ethiopia about four years ago. We sat down with her and about an hour later came up with the idea for me to start a sewing program in her school. I was going to teach them how to make infinity scarves because it would be easier to make than a shirt that has sleeves and collars. The next couple of months, I worked to fundraise for it and ended up using the idea of the “Jessica Foundation” from when I was younger to have all of my friends and people from the community to donate clothes and sell them. After three fundraisers, I was able to raise more than $2,000. I used that money to buy six sewing machines, materials, thread and scissors. The first day in Ethiopia, I figured that we would get through setting up the machines and cutting the material. I had really low expectations for the first day because most of the girls didn’t really know what to do with sewing and some of them had never even used scissors before. After the first day, those girls were so eager to learn and each had made their own scarf after just one day! We let them take home their first one and keep it as a memory. For the next couple of days, the girls made about 80 scarves and we had them present them to the older girls of the school. Leaving Ethiopia, I knew that I had gotten my Gold Award, but I knew I wasn’t done. When I got back home, I had decided that I was going to sell the scarves in America because people here will pay more for a scarf, especially after knowing its background. I also developed a tag that could be sewn into the scarves, so when a girl made that scarf, they could sign their name on the tag to really give it that personal appeal. I decided that I was going to sell the scarves with all the proceeds going back into the program, as well as giving money to that specific girl. I’ve called it Sitota Scarves, since the school is called Sitota Learning Center. Sitota in Ethiopia means gift, so that also ties into the whole idea behind “Gifts for Confidence.”
Courtesy: Jessica Bachansingh
HC: What was it like going back to Ethiopia and basically rewarding the girls for all their hard work?
JB: I was able to go back to Ethiopia last spring break and in between that time of when I opened my Etsy shop and when I went, I sold about 70-80 scarves. Being able to pay them and give them a certificate for their work was when I was able to see my program go full circle. I was also able to promote the sewing program when I went back! I had 21 girls sign up, which I kept thinking was a lot of girls. My program is also something that is done year-round, not just when I’m there since I hired a seamstress to continue teaching. My whole goal with this program was to teach girls a marketable skill. When you invest in girls and in women, they are more likely to invest it back into their communities because they are the ones who will educate their own children one day. Women in third world countries are also not given as many opportunities as women are here in America, so I’m basically trying to give them the opportunity to have this skill and be able to make money for themselves in the future. For a couple of days, I worked with these 21 girls and have the girls that were there a year before teach the new girls. I had the new girls to the program make infinity scarves, but I had the girls that were there the year before making a new product, Konjo Kimonos. I try to make our work environment fun. We sing and we just have a good time! It’s a really girl empowered environment.
HC: Obviously, the community that you have set up your sewing program has made these scarves well known. Have you ever wanted to open the program to others?
JB: When I was telling the people about the program for this year, a lot of the boys were interested. I wasn’t too sure if I should open it up to boys, but a missionary in Ethiopia was telling me to strictly keep it to the girls. She told me that right now tailors in Ethiopia are mainly men. When you go to get a dress made, they will make it tighter in the way a woman’s body should be. She told me that you need to teach these women how to make clothes for themselves since they knew how a woman’s body fits. When I heard that, I couldn’t believe it! From that point, I decided to keep it a girls only program. Don’t get me wrong, I love some of the boys at the Ethiopian school, but this is giving girls the opportunity which is what is important to me.
HC: You mentioned earlier how you have an Etsy shop. How did you start that and what do you sell on there?
JB: The weekend before I started college is when I started my Etsy shop, which is how I was going to sell the scarves. It’s really hard to manage what is basically like a business and school all at the same time. All of my materials are at home in Jacksonville and my mom, my operations manager as she likes to call herself, handles a lot of the orders and that process. If I were to get an order on Etsy, I would send it to my mom and she would package up the scarves and include a tag label that tells a little bit of our story. From my end, like I said, it is hard to be in charge of a business and also being here attending classes. You get so caught up in your everyday life of college with homework, club meetings, trying to keep up a social life and everything in between.
HC: So what exactly are your plans for your program in the future?
JB: Another amazing opportunity that I just got is that I found a program at FSU called Moellership. This program is through The Center of Leadership and Social Change here at FSU and basically you find yourself a nonprofit to work for over the summer for 8-12 weeks. You have to find this nonprofit yourself and apply to be a part of this program. You have to first make it to the interview process and then once you make it through that they pick you and they have like six program spots and they give you $4000 to do this. So, I tied this back to the nonprofits I had already been working with. There’s two nonprofits servicing the school and I’m going to be working with Elpis. The reason for choosing Elpis is because its founder is Ethiopian with his whole family living there and the school is in his name. He is ultimately the decision maker. I met with him over Thanksgiving break and he was telling me how the school is seen as better because of this sewing program. People want to get their children into the school because they want them to learn this skill. That obviously makes me feel so good because of the difference I am able to make in Ethiopia. He also told me that a factory had opened up in the city where the school is and we have people in HR that he knows in the factory. This is able to provide us with so many opportunities because if I networked with them and they accepted my sewing program, my girls could get direct jobs in that factory, which fulfills my ultimate goals for these girls. The factory also produces textiles and I really want to be able to start sourcing my textiles from that factory. I believe that will only bring more value to my product. People would want to get these products because it’s a textile that they can’t get here since it’s made directly in Ethiopia.
HC: It sounds like you have the next couple of months, or life really, all planned out!
JB: Yeah! Under my nonprofit internship, I’ll be working with Elpis since I actually got the spot from the Moellership Program! This was the one thing that will propel my future. My summer is going to look like this: in May, I’ll be working on the website (finally), as well as developing a stricter sewing curriculum and registering the program as a nonprofit. In June, I’ll be going to Ethiopia to teach the new curriculum and talking with the factory. Straight from there, I’m going to London for 21 days for my study abroad program, as well as spending a week in Paris. I’m basically going to have the summer of a lifetime and I couldn’t be more excited!
If you’re interested in learning more about Jessica and her amazing “Gifts for Confidence” program, visit her Facebook page and her Etsy shop!
Rep image courtesy of: Nicole Korolevich, Niki Leigh Photography