Detroit’s College for Creative Studies Hustles to Attract Accessories and Fashion Students

For thousands of design-minded students, Detroit might not be the obvious choice for school, but the little-known College for Creative Studies aims to change that perspective for aspiring designers and brands alike.

After introducing an accessories department in 2015 and adding apparel design in 2021, the school is submitting a fashion business management program for 2026 accreditation. To try to attract more applicants and brand partners, Aki Choklat, the school’s Linda Dresner endowed chair in fashion design, visited New York City last month. There was also a biannual board meeting, which is held once a year in New York City, to accommodate the major labels that participate.

As of January, Choklat will teach a college-credited accessories class for about 20 students at the High School of Fashion Industries in New York City. The initiative will give CCS a foothold in New York, but it is also being done “in kind” to support the students on their career path — many of whom live below the poverty level. “If they choose to study with us, great. If they choose to go somewhere else, it’s also OK,” Choklat said. “I’m doing this for my industry because nobody wants to study footwear any more. Something has happened and we need to not let it die. I’m on a mission to push a footwear and handbag agenda,” he said.

As an accessories and footwear designer, who sells a namesake label and custom designs, the Finnish-born executive said there is a dearth of talent Stateside in that area. As Detroit’s resurgence continues, CCS aims to widen the fashion base. Aside from being the only U.S. city among 40 locales that is designated as a UNESCO City of Design, “Detroit is amazing. It’s huge, and there’s so much opportunity. It feels like everything is possible,” he said. “I used to live in Williamsburg in the early 1990s. Now I don’t recognize it. I mean there’s an Hermès [store] there, right? There wasn’t an ATM machine when I lived there.”

Detroit reminds him of those early years in Brooklyn, but “a thousand times bigger.” And the little-known school is attracting attention from some luxury labels. Eager “to build a bridge to Europe,” CCS staged a showroom featuring the work of select alumni on Rue Saint-Honoré during Paris Fashion Week in September. The UNESCO designation prompted the U.S. ambassador to France to visit the Paris showroom earlier this fall. The goal is to host a PFW runway show there in the next two years and students have already been advised that they need to elevate their game. Rey Pador, who worked with Dries Van Noten and Balenciaga, heads up CCS’ apparel department and joined Choklat in New York.

Louis Vuitton representatives recently visited the U.S. campus to meet with students. The European house is also part of CCS’ advisory group as are Tapestry, Calvin Klein, Hermès, Bottega Veneta and others. The latter, for example, will be offering a one-week mentoring program to give students a better understanding of what it would mean to work for a major European company. CCS is trying to remind students of the alternatives to FIT, the Savannah College of Art & Design, the Rhode Island School of Design and other schools.

Despite the big-name support, CCS is pretty tiny with 20 accessories students and 39 fashion ones, but the number of applicants continues to increase. (Two-hundred sixty people applied for the accessories slots last year.) With an annual tuition of $52,000, the average fall 2024 student received $31,393 in scholarship and or grant money to offset that cost.

“The number-one thing is to get students jobs. They pay a lot of money. That’s the first thing that they worry about from the first semester on. My main job is to make sure that they get good training and they get a job,” Choklat said. (Tapestry, for example, has five students serving as apprentices.)

But Detroit is not always an easy sell. Choklat recalled how the corporate headhunter Karen Harvey reached out to him years ago about CCS. (His husband was even more opposed to the idea.) Then based between London and Florence, he said, “I had a very privileged life with a home in London and Florence. I was in Florence one day, laying in my bed looking at the hills and the phone rang. They said, ‘There’s a job in Detroit.’ I was like, ‘What? No, I’m not interested.’”

Later while having a drink, a friend insisted that he “go have a look, take the free trip and don’t take the job.” After an initial conversation in London with a CCS-er, who became nearly teary-eyed describing her experience in Detroit, Choklat agreed to check it out. “I didn’t fall in love with the grubby I-94. But when I saw the college, I thought, ‘I wish I had had that [as an MA student] at the Royal College of Art,’ which is often considered one of the best design schools in the world. But we had nothing [then.] There were like three sewing machines and they were never working.”

After being shown 6,000 square feet of empty space at CCS and money to create anything he wanted, Choklat was sold. His initial task of establishing an accessories fashion school was an idea that The Row’s Ashley Olsen, a member of the school’s original advisory group, had suggested. With a thriving arts and culture scene, Detroit has its own troves too like Elizabeth Parke Firestone’s couture collection from the 1940s and 1950s at the Henry Ford Museum, or the one million used and rare books at John K. King Books. Notable guests from Ferragamo and other fashion houses will get to see the sights, during their visit for the April fashion show.

As students are increasingly challenged by “how to navigate and survive in this post-everything world,” Choklat said that many are questioning whether they want to go for a trophy job, start their own labels, find work near their parents and or land a design job that won’t require living in New York.

“Before it was quite easy, you go work for a big company and you made it,” Choklat said. “We’re trying to make our education really student-centric. We’re lucky that we’re so small. I know probably too much about students. We’re trying to make sure they will be good humans when they go out in the world. It sounds a little bit utopian but that’s what we practice.”

Having accomplished what he was hired to do — launch an accessories design program — he didn’t have to stay. “But we are like a little family. I feel really good that we have created a new culture in Detroit for in-depth fashion education, footwear and handbag designers,” Choklat said. “Everybody comes to us for handbag designers, because they are very hard to find in the U.S.”