Majoring in chic at L.A.'s fashion schools

In a bustling part of downtown L.A., a high-rise is teeming with stylish young women in short skirts and full makeup wheeling small suitcases in and out of elevators on their way to class. They're students at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising, where, down the hall from a flat-screen TV broadcasting a runway show, past a plexiglass case of high-fashion Barbies, two of their peers are consulting with Mary Stephens, the school's self-described "big boss."¶"This is a very new-looking shape here," says Stephens, FIDM's director of fashion design. She is talking to Alejandro Ortega, one of 11 students the school has accepted into its advanced fashion design program this year and one of the 8,000 students enrolled on FIDM's four California campuses.

By Susan Carpenter

January 8, 2012