The model strutted down the runway, clad in a white dress accented with a broken line of black. But the most striking aspect of the outfit was the piece of fruit covering her face.

It was apparel and textile design senior Kyla Curtis’s creation “The Daughter of Man,” one of many similarly outrageous outfits featured in this year’s Apparel and Textile Design Fashion Show, put on at the beginning of March.

The piece was previously entered into a surrealist competition at the Cleveland Museum of Art earlier this year, where it won the People’s Choice Award.

She said the inspiration for the design came from the surrealist painting “The Son of Man” by Rene Margritte.

Curtis is just one of the many students enrolled in MSU whose passions and talents for fashion and design are being fostered through the curriculum.

In a university known for its focus on agriculture, research and athletics, it can sometimes be hard to imagine MSU as a hub for artistic expression.

And the drab Urban Design and Landscape Architecture Building, nestled in a small corner near Spartan Stadium, is an unassuming location for creativity to flourish.

Even the interior is underwhelming with plain walls and little color.

That is, until one takes a trip up the stairwell, where the second and third floors are dotted with display cases of historic fashions and bright decorations.

Further along the hallway, doors open into workshops that reveal a whole different world of activity where colors pop, sewing machines hum and mannequins pose.

It’s a strange home for the apparel and textile design program, but the students and staff who frequent the building make it work.

Guiding the needle

When the apparel and textile design program was first founded in the 1890s, it was originally a part of the College of Human Ecology, associate professor of apparel and textile design Sally Helvenston Gray said.

Since the dissolution of the College of Human Ecology in 2004, Helvenston Gray said ATD floated back and forth between different colleges and schools within the university, including the College of Communication Arts and Sciences, before finding its current home in the School of Art, Art History and Design.

Early on, the program focused primarily on practical skills like sewing and using basic textiles and patterns to make clothing, she said.

“They did a lot of hand embroidery (back then),” Helvenston Gray said. “With today’s students — you say to them, ‘You have to do it by hand’ and that’s completely foreign to them.”

Nowadays, the program heavily emphasizes artistic expression in terms of avant garde fashion. Curtis said this means the students are “free to mix art with fashion.”

Although ATD faculty consists of only five professors, they provide a supportive network of resources and guidance for their students in the classroom and beyond.

Assistant professor Xia Gao began her fashion career at China Textile University, where she worked as both a student and a faculty member for more than 10 years before moving to the United States.

Gao said she was drawn to MSU because of the university’s strong reputation as an international research university.

“For my own course, I try to balance creativity and technique,” she said. “We train our students as active and critical thinkers.”

Helvenston Gray has been teaching at MSU for more than 30 years.

During her time at MSU, she said she has kept in touch with many of her former students and has even worked with two of them as colleagues in the program.

Like Gao, she said she believes in creating students who are ready to take on the professional world in more ways than just being able to design a dress or a pair of shoes, which may come as a surprise to students coming in to ATD as a major.

“I think people don’t think (our program) is as rigorous as it really is,” she said.

MSU’s program is ranked as No. 70 among the top 75 in the country by FashionSchools.org.

Through a partnership with the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City, ATD students have the opportunity to apply as a visiting student to spend a year studying in a program considered to be one of the best in the world.

Alumna Ashley Gallerani attended this program and now works as a fabric lab assistant at FIT. Her schedule is a hectic one.

“I work with students and help them with designs,” she said. “I also do freelance design, sewing, photography, and I recently started writing. I’m super busy, but my mind prefers to be working on a hundred things instead of just one repetitive thing.”

Putting the pieces together

For many ATD students, their work doesn’t end at the conclusion of the class period.

After hours and during weekends, it’s not unusual to see at least one or two people in one of the third floor workshops sewing or hemming an outfit.

Apparel and textile design senior Niki Sullivan’s interest in fashion began at a young age.

“I was trying to sew when I was little,” Sullivan said. “Like, I would sew beads on socks — it was so ugly.”

But that youthful passion turned into something Sullivan now gives much of her time for.

“I don’t sleep,” she said.

But all of those late hours seem to have paid off. Sullivan won best in show in the 2015 Apparel and Textile Design Fashion Show, as well as judge’s choice.

Though the task of finding a career after graduating can be daunting — especially for art students — ATD alumni have made their way to a number of interesting places.

Alumna Jacalyn Gross is the CEO of her own female athletic apparel company, UR Sportswear, in Los Angeles.

After graduating in 2009 with the plan for her company already in mind, her main priority was funding. To achieve her goal, Gross worked in several odd jobs across the country.

Her first product for UR Sportswear was released in 2012 after spending some time working with Big Ten female athletes to discover what they liked and disliked about current sports apparel on the market.

Gross’s advice for ATD students is to start making contacts within the industry early on.

“Being a designer is awesome, but you need to understand the business aspect of it as well,” Gross said.

Katie Raynard and Anami Chan, both current apparel and textile design seniors, are already well on their way to mastering that side of the fashion world.

Raynard received the Excellence in Diversity Award from MSU earlier this year for her work on Fashion for the Fire, a runway show that she and Chan created that will take place next month. The show is meant to bring awareness to sexual assault and childhood survivors, and will serve as a fundraiser for that cause.

They both said their experience in the ATD program has equipped them with the tools they need to make those connections in the community and produce designs that are thought-provoking and meaningful.

“They don’t allow you to be common,” Raynard said of her instructors.