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Texas Fashion Industry Initiative

The state's official non-profit devoted to the growth of the Texas fashion industry through career development or support for entrepreneurs.

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Project Description

Silver Jacket Entrepreneur Program

The Texas Fashion Industry Initiative strives to bring positive growth of the Texas fashion industry through fashion career development or support for fashion entrepreneurs. TFII’s mission works on the growth of the Texas fashion community by building a strong foundation for entrepreneurs to learn and adapt their talents to progress forward. This is done with the use of our Silver Jacket Entrepreneur Program, which is composed of predominantly women designers and entrepreneurs who go through a year of education in building their business and then a second year accelerating with the support of TFII Members, co-facilitators, board and TFII community. Upon satisfactory completion of TFII Criteria, they upgrade their entry level denim jackets to their silver jackets on stage at The TEXAS FASHION AWARDS™. This program also offers ongoing mentorship in preparation for their ribbon cutting and grand opening, as well as continued access to mentorship so that they don’t have to go at their career journey alone. As a product of this program, we host an eight-day event in the Fall called TEXAS FASHION WEEK™, which is used to promote and showcase the Texas talent who participated in our programming all year long. It also hosts network opportunities with global fashion industry allies that help push careers forward and puts members, and students on the worldwide spectrum of fashion.

Texas Fashion Industry Initiative 4 Areas of Advocacy. 

We are located in South Texas in the city of San Antonio. We are a city rich in history, bursting with culture, embracing diversity and booming with many attractions. As a city that thrives in the arts, fashion has yet to be elevated on the platform of regular support and funding. Our mission helps to uplift our city culture as the “Arts City of Texas” as well as our fashion talent who are artists in their own right and strive to build careers for themselves and others. Our non-profit works vigorously towards our mission because we value our Texas talent. We strive to provide more jobs for our community so that we are able to keep our talented designers, entrepreneurs and artists home and dispel the old idea that fashion careers are only available in other fashion-based cities such as Los Angeles or New York. We build bridges to global opportunity so that we can retain our talent at home.

Texas Fashion Awards Ceremony, San Antonio, Texas. 

Texas Fashion Industry Initiative & TEXAS FASHION WEEK™ serves our San Antonio/Texas community as well as our local businesses and aspiring new business owners. Currently we have 180 clients who are directly involved in TEXAS FASHION WEEK™ alone and each year we are growing. We are predicting thousands across America will be incorporating TEXAS FASHION WEEK™ into their annual calendar and budget as a centralized networking and business opportunity for commerce and art and so we are currently planning for the demand. Many will be involved and served within our Fashion Community, including but not limited to, Fashion Designers, Fashion Sculptures, Fashion Painters, Avant Garde Designers, Fashion Stylists, Cobblers, Milliners, Fashion Film Makers, Jewelry Designers, Avant Garde Accessory Designers, Film Accessory Designers, Fashion Photographers, Tailoring Specialists, Costume Designers, Interactive Fashion Art Creators, Hair Stylists, Hair Sculptures, Spa owners, Aestheticians, Makeup Artists, Retail Curators, High School and College fashion students, Bloggers and Fashion Marketers. Our programs range from high school students to college students to adults, serving mostly underprivileged Hispanic/Mexican-American women as well as African/American women but open to everyone. We serve a qualifying population in Texas with an emphasis in San Antonio.

 

TFII Quarterly Membership Mixer

Texas Fashion Industry Initiative Quarterly Mixer. 

The Texas Fashion Industry Initiative is enhanced with the creation of its membership program which is expanding rapidly. This allows fashion community to belong to a network of diverse fashion professionals offering endless opportunities to collaborate, increase business and build positive impact among themselves and others.

As mentioned above, the Silver Jacket Entrepreneur Program also gets served by the Professional Level Members as many of them turn into Mentors to our younger Trendsetter Level Members who are in school or in their first years of business. The origin of the Silver Jacket Entrepreneur Program launched as an extension of our past Style Lush Summer Education Series classes back in 2016-18. Now, it is made to take recent fashion students or adult entrepreneurs from their fashion business dream to their fashion business launch, gaining them strong online presence, unparalleled mentorship support, strong business plan formation and exciting partnerships for accelerated, continual business education and networking. This has proven to give women in our community the opportunities to build a future for themselves and thrive in our ever-growing business world.

Texas Fashion Week, San Antonio.

Fashion Week SATX, year one of Texas Fashion Week.

As you can imagine, our team comes together, with blood sweat and tears, to plan and execute TEXAS FASHION WEEK™ and the TEXAS FASHION AWARDS™ every year. Both products of our educational programming and direct extensions of the incredible talent TFII’s Global Awareness Department (Style Lush TV Fashion News) discovers year after year. It is hard work, but it is work that we love. Our mission drives us to accomplish greatness, and to see growth not just for ourselves but more importantly, the community we serve. It is because of this rapid growth that we seek funding in order to help daily operations function more effectively and efficiently while serving our community and the demand for our programming.

This funding will help us execute programming, produce quality events and experiences, assists in the acceleration of our Silver Jacket Entrepreneur Program, but at this point, we have done all we can. We realize that it is time to seek assistance. We cannot accomplish this by ourselves and can no longer function with a voluntary staff alone.

We will spend these funds on: hiring staff to help maintain daily operations, production costs for our eight days of TEXAS FASHION WEEK™ program and elevate the quality of our educational programming so that our advocacy of career development and entrepreneur support can be amplified along with our newfound partner, the CFDA. 

Currently we are striving to hire: a TFII Executive Director, Executive Producer for TEXAS FASHION WEEK™ and striving to continue to be artist rights activists while advocating for fair-pay to the professionals that make TEXAS FASHION WEEK™ happen: models, styling team, makeup artists, hair stylists, event staff, marketing staff, catering staff, waiters, cleaners, videographers, and photographers, backstage runners, and check in staff to name a few. We are also currently striving to hire Education Directors, one for adults and one for our youth. We strive to do this so that for the first time in our local history, a true advocate for fashion career development can be here to let kids know that fashion careers are possible and that there is support early in their lives for their dreams.

Other positions that we are seeking to fill is a Global Awareness Department Director, Grant Researcher & Writer, Marketing & PR Director and paid positions for interns.

TFII/SLTV Team

Pictured L to R: Burgundy Woods, Jeanelly Concepcion, Kassandra Rodriguez, Kaia Dublin, & Saige Thomas. 

Currently we execute this entire vision with 100% volunteers. We are lucky enough to have a group of hardworking women on board, leading the vision with passion and staying true to their motto “For the Greater Good”. Currently, our organization's founder and former president, Burgundy Woods, she served as the volunteer Global Awareness Director and is Editor in Chief for Style Lush TV, our online fashion news partner helping us tell the stories of our Texas fashion talent globally. Working alongside Woods is Jeanelly Concepcion, Texas Fashion Industry Initiative, President-elect. Our Arts & Culture Director, Saige Thomas, also serves as Vice-President for TFII and the Executive Producer of TEXAS FASHION WEEK™. Kaia Dublin, our Marketing & Visual Director designs and oversees campaigns for our organization and maintains social media accounts. She also steps in as the TEXAS FASHION WEEK™ Power Team Leader helping all backstage necessities for our participants of the program as well as castings and meeting all year long for our fundraisers, now also serving as Secretary for TFII. Lastly, Kassandra Rodriguez, our Grants & Fundraising Director who is responsible for finding funding opportunities for our organization and continually invests herself, into gaining more education on the subject to help our mission. All five women also work endless volunteer hours on the back end, helping the growth of the mission and making sure that this vision never dies out. In addition to all of these duties, all the girls also maintain our Global Awareness Department as Fashion Journalists for Style Lush TV providing professional-level editorial journalism promoting Texas fashion talent and Texas fashion industry so that everyone in our community has a voice and a free platform to share their businesses and brands.

 

We want to thank you for taking the time to hear our story and our mission. Our mission is observable and attainable.  We strive to empower women and we are a 100% woman lead company. We believe that so much is encompassed in the word ART and fashion needs a stronger advocate so that the many fashion talents out here can be served and supported.  Our passion and dedication is evident. We have seen our journey come full circle with the launch of TEXAS FASHION WEEK™ and as an innovative fashion week that helps year-round with career development, we ask for your support.  We have a strong passion for what we do and the funding will go towards an incredible cause that will uplift so many. We thank you in advance for any funding you may be able to offer us, and we are so appreciative and honored to receive any amount. Thank you.

Updates

The Campaign FAQs

Q: How long has your organization been established. 

A: Texas Fashion Industry Initiative has been running for 3 years. Although this non-profit is fairly new, our mission started in 2014 with the establishment of Style Lush TV San Antonio, which is our Arts & Culture Department. 

 

Q: How many businesses/artists have been impacted with the help of TFII?

A: Approximately 600 individuals have been impacted by our non-profit. We strive to educate entrepreneurs and designers with our Silver Jacket Program as well as provide jobs for Texas Fashion Week and Texas Fashion Awards. 

Q: Who are the entities supporting this organization?

A: We are lucky enough to be supported by many local Texas organizations, among them being, The City of San Antonio, The San Antonio Chamber of Commerce, as well as The Council of Fashion Designers of American (CFDA) in New York City. We have also been sponsored by companies such as, Mercedes, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Lancome to name a few.

 

 

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San antonio, TX
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