Why the Arizona State University Takeover of FIDM L.A. Has Everyone Talking

The nameplates across the office doors at the renamed ASU FIDM fashion school in Los Angeles are made of paper, an indication that everyone at the desks is a relatively new hire.

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The halls in the enormous building are a little quieter these days with the upcoming fall semester expecting only 147 fashion and design students who will be studying at the downtown campus that once saw as many as 3,280 full-time students, including well-known L.A. designers Monique Lhuillier, Kevan Hall and Karen Kane , who have their own successful self-named fashion companies.

Last year, the 170,000-square-foot building, housing the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising since 1990, was acquired by Arizona State University for $15 million even though its assessed value was $52.7 million. In addition, FIDM’s intellectual property such as trademarks and copyrights, its textile lab, extensive library, sewing machines and its 15,000-piece fashion collection went for $13 million.

Renamed ASU FIDM after the acquisition, the campus is now an extension of Arizona State University, a mammoth teaching institution in the Phoenix/Tempe area with some 177,000 full-time students and four campuses in Arizona. ASU also has another relatively new downtown Los Angeles campus at the historic Herald-Examiner newspaper building where space is leased for classes in journalism, law and film taken by hundreds of students.

While ASU FIDM took over the fashion design classes once offered at FIDM, the legacy FIDM continued to work on graduating its remaining fashion and design students, which happened in June when 1,200 graduates received their diplomas.

With its fashion classes winding down over the past 15 months, the legacy school has laid off 524 instructors, department heads, administrators and maintenance employees between April 2023 and June, according to notices filed with the California Employment Development Department.

Because ASU didn’t want to take over FIDM’s creative business classes, the legacy fashion school continues to teach those classes in a nearby office building to have the last of its 400 business-oriented students graduate in March.

The old FIDM thought it had a deal for the Skema Business School in France to assume the classes. But that deal fell apart at the last minute earlier this year. Now it is hoping another educational institution takes over the creative business classes. “Skema was brought to us by a friend, and we were devastated when it didn’t work out,” said Barbara Bundy, the longtime vice president of education for the legacy fashion school. “We are in talks with a couple of institutions about moving the legacy of our creative business classes forward. We have some interested people and should know more in another month. We have been approached by a couple of universities.”

The demise of the old Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising, founded by Toni Hohberg in 1969, is the story of many U.S. private fashion, art and design institutes with high tuitions hovering around $20,000 to $50,000 a year. Many students have been looking for cheaper outlets, such as online courses or community colleges where tuition can be as low as $1,100 a year. The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 exacerbated the situation when many classes moved online.

Student departures have resulted in financial difficulties at several schools. In 2022, the San Francisco Art Institute, with a 1931 Diego Rivera mural valued at $50 million in its historic building, closed its doors due to a looming $20 million debt. Earlier this year, a nonprofit led by Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs, bought the campus and the mural for $30 million. An unaccredited art institution is planned for the space.

Last year, the Art Institutes, a nationwide network of private art schools, closed its remaining eight campuses, including those in Dallas, Houston, Miami and Atlanta, due to a nearly $100 million Department of Justice judgment against it for misleading students about its post-school career salaries and prospects. The campuses also faced declining enrollment and mounting debt.

Back in Southern California, Woodbury University, a small private liberal arts school in Burbank with a number of architecture, animation, interior design and fashion design classes, was acquired recently by the University of Redlands, also in Southern California. Woodbury was facing mounting debt that started in 2015 with falling student enrollment. In 2019, the year before the pandemic, Woodbury had 1,355 undergraduate and graduate students. By fall of 2023, that had dipped to 855 students.

At the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising, student enrollment began declining in 2011 and financial debt had been accumulating since 2016, according to the WASC Senior College and University Commission, which inspects and accredits higher-education institutions. “The institutional leadership has moved slowly in taking necessary steps to cut costs and to look for new ways to increase enrollment and revenue streams,” the commission said in a March 2021 report. The legacy FIDM’s accreditation was in jeopardy.

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Looking to address falling enrollment, the legacy fashion school closed its satellite campuses in San Francisco, San Diego and Irvine, Calif., after the institution projected a $10 million loss in fiscal-year 2020-21. The following year, a $5 million loss was foreseen as well as a $1.6 million loss expected in fiscal year 2022-23. The fashion school also had a long-term $28 million debt scheduled to mature in fiscal year 2024, which happens to be the same sum ASU paid for FIDM.

With revenues that had gone from $68.3 million in early 2020 to $44.2 million in 2022, the old FIDM began looking for a lifesaver. That’s when Arizona State University stepped in. With a relatively new fashion school launched seven years ago, ASU wanted to expand.

Now, the expanded ASU FIDM school and its Phoenix counterpart are being guided by Dennita Sewell , the ASU fashion program’s founding director, a professor of practice, fashion and an internationally renowned curator who organized more than 50 exhibitions when she was the curator of fashion at the Phoenix Art Museum. Dividing her time between the Los Angeles and Phoenix/Tempe campuses, she is busy charting the school’s future with programs that will expand the school’s offerings.

“Now Los Angeles has the resources of a big, innovative Research One university that has international reach,” Sewell explained. “For example, if you wanted to be a French minor, you could go to a Phoenix campus and be a French minor and a fashion major.”

ASU has some unique offerings, including two research projects at its Arizona campus focused on sustainability.

Starting in 2025, ASU FIDM will launch a semester in Los Angeles program for Arizona-based students to study in Los Angeles, and this past summer there was a five-day fashion summer camp at both campuses for high school and community college students. It introduced students to potential fashion careers and the academic campuses.

ASU FIDM also offers a “Turn Around Bus” trip between the two campuses. During the first trip in February, fashion students in Phoenix took a six-hour bus ride to spend three days and two nights in Los Angeles.

While at the L.A. campus, students saw Professor Deborah Young demonstrate how to use the school’s textile testing lab. They toured the ASU FIDM library and saw its extensive resources, including decades of bound Vogue magazines, an archive of trend forecasts and years of research. They also saw items from the ASU FIDM museum’s collection of 15,000 vintage clothing pieces spanning four centuries and toured the nearby Los Angeles Fashion District filled with fabric stores, fashion showrooms and design studios.

Sewell’s energy for building the new ASU FIDM into a fashion powerhouse starts by expanding its programs, including developing a bachelor’s degree in costume design and technology for the creative industries for fall 2025. Three online degree programs are also in the works.

She also has her eye on building buzz through the school’s gallery space, which has a history of mounting annual exhibitions on film and television costume design, with well-attended opening parties. On Sept. 5, “Fashion Statements,” the inaugural fashion exhibition at the ASU FIDM Museum, will open featuring more than 70 works from the 18th century to the present selected by guest contributors including designers Jeremy Scott and Lisa Eisner, costume designer Arianne Phillips, stylist B. Åkerlund and burlesque queen Dita Von Teese.

Sewell also wants to see professors move back and forth between campuses to offer lectures on specialized topics. Recently, Galina Mihaleva came from Phoenix to give a workshop on wearable technology. “Every institution has something to offer their students, and we’re excited that we have all of these resources,” Sewell said. “We want to take people on as students and help them gain the skills they need for a career and a better life.”

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