Meet Ashley Zuchelli, a young woman with an excellent eye for visual design, a passion for fashion, and this week’s Campus Celebrity. Ashley is a senior working towards a bachelor’s degree in Fashion Merchandising, with two minors in Small Business Administration and Marketing. She is an ambitious leader that has a bright future in fashion.
“I love fashion and I knew when I decided to become a fashion merchandising major: this was the best choice for me.”
Ashley was raised in a little town named Slickville, just forty-five minutes away from IUP. First, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to come, but she had many family members that also attended the school. She wanted to be close to area, therefore, she chose IUP. She came to IUP with two majors in mind, but she didn’t know which one path she wanted to take,
“When I was applying for college, I was between two college major choices. I didn’t know if I wanted to major in Fashion Merchandising or Early Childhood Education. IUP had both majors, so I chose IUP and I decided that I would choose one of those majors once I came up here.”
In the end, Ashley became a Fashion Merchandising major and began to get more involved in the IUP community. She joined the Fashion Visual Merchandising Club, a student organization dedicated to fashion and using display windows to catch the eye of viewers. The mission of the IUP Fashion Visual Merchandise Club is to promote the skills of visual merchandising to the students of IUP, while expressing individuality and creativity. Now in her senior year, Ashley is the president in the club and she does her best to have her club involved in the IUP and the Indiana communities.
“In Fashion Visual Merchandising club, we use the display windows and bulletin boards to create a visual display for fashion. We create a theme, give some tips, and create a bulletin board about clothes and fashion.”
The Fashion Visual Merchandising Club also helps local businesses with their display window. In February, the club partner up with The Costume Show in the Indiana community to work on their window display.
“We also go around to local businesses and help them with their display window, because our club is not only dedicated to clothes, but developing a sense of style of a business. We try to develop relationships with the small businesses in the community. “
The club also hosted the Men of Style Fashion show for men who like fashion. The raised eight hundred dollars and donated half the money to the American Cancer Society.
In addition to being the president of The Fashion Visual Merchandising club, Ashley is a sales associate at Nordstrom’s. She loves working there and hopes to get an internship after college for buying, merchandising, and planning at Nordstrom’s headquarters in Seattle.
Ashley’s advice for future students is always get involved and try new things: “Get involved and make connections. The sky is the limit. And remember to do what you want to do.”
Ashley is an inspiration to females in the IUP community and hopefully all her dreams come true. Ashley lives by a quote she got from the show Gossip Girl: “Let the past be the past. Other times we need to look towards the future and that even when we think we’ve see it all, life can still surprise us.”