SUNY Day 2013: FIT-CAROLEE Collaboration Puts Students Into Marketplace

On February 11, dozens of SUNY campuses convened at the Legislative Office Building in Albany’s Empire State Plaza to showcase their individual contributions to their communities as well as SUNY’s collective contributions. SUNY Day is an event where the public, senators, and assemblymen are all welcome to see the latest of what each SUNY campus has to offer. This year’s theme was experiential education.

Generation SUNY is helping bring you a few of those stories in our SUNY DAY 2013 series.

Fashion Institute of Technology

To celebrate CAROLEE’s 40th anniversary, the iconic brand collaborated with the Fashion Institute of Technology (SUNY) for a student design competition in the Jewelry Design department. The competition spanned four categories of jewelry design: pearl, metal, social/bridal, fashion. A fifth  People’s Choice category was chosen via social media voting. We were lucky enough to meet the winning student designer for the fashion category, Palwasha Iqbal, at our annual SUNY Day event in Albany.

Palwasha, a junior at FIT, chose jewelry design early on in high school. She was largely influenced by her grandfather who owned a jewelry business in Pakistan. With the support of her teachers and family, she began to pursue her passion.

“I chose FIT  because it’s extremely well rounded.”, said the Long Island native from Huntington, Suffolk County. “It has those jewelry classes I love, business classes I need and liberal arts classes that are so inspirational all at an amazing price and location. FIT also focuses on the commercial side of jewelry; preparing us for the current industry.”

Iqbal will be graduating in May 2014 with a BA in Accessories Design along with a double minor in English and Art History. She is currently a Presidential Scholar and received a UCE of FIT Scholarship last year.

Along with Palwasha Iqbal in the Fashion category, winners included:

• Yoonji Choi in the Pearls category,
• Prakshi Sharma in the Social/Bridal category,
• Christine Gonzalez in the Metals category, and
• Elyse Spencer as the People’s Choice winner.

In addition to receiving a $1,000 award, each winner’s designs are being manufactured and sold by CAROLEE at counters worldwide along with placement in the window display at Bloomingdale’s 59th Street location and features in fashion publications like Nylon Magazine. For each piece sold, Carolee will donate $5 to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. The brand will also donate $2500 annually for the next 4 years to FIT for the Carolee Scholarship.

To see clips of each finalist’s works, visit CAROLEE on YouTube.

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