Experience
Senior Brand Manager, Under the Canopy & Portico, Earthbound Brands [ NYC ] - February 2015 - August 2017
Oversaw all aspects of business and sustainable product development from initial brand launch through acquisition by parent company, Earthbound Brands in 2015. Oversaw aesthetic direction alongside Creative Director, managed product development process through market, maintained compliance with sustainability initiatives, annual audits, reporting and new material projects. Presented quarterly investor meetings, sought new business partners, assisted in sales pitches to senior management of large retail partners. Hired and contributed to marketing and public relations teams via strategy, interviews, copywriting and activations. Facilitated a direct-to-consumer e-commerce platform, managed day-to-day fulfillment and inventory, managed on-boarding of new vendors and product SKUs.
Engagement Fellow in Disclosure Services, Carbon Disclosure Project [ NYC ] - October 2014 - February 2015
Served as an intermediary between CDP investor signatories and the world’s industry leaders to aggregate environmental data. Directly communicated with investor relations and internal governance of the world's largest companies, Cayla promoted the transparency of corporate sustainability and best practices in order to benchmark GHG emissions and minimize climate impact across consumer brands.
Adjunct Professor, Parsons The New School for Design [ NYC ] - Academic Year 2014 - 2015
Taught Strategic Design and Management in New Economies within the Design Strategies Masters Program. Exposed and introduced graduate students to the contexts, complexities, and conditions of the digital economy (technological, socio-political, economic, and demographic) based on services, experiences, and transience. Focused on the changing patterns in technologies and markets, Cayla facilitated an understanding of how environmental change influences the design of the next wave of economic activity, and how to strategically manage opportunities and threats for both mature and startup firms.
+ As a lauded scholar of Fashion Studies, Cayla is the first to propose a sustainable production model predicated on participation and positive engagement with the developing fashion industry. Founded on education, technology, and a scalable economic scheme, her research was presented and published at the Global Fashion Conference 2014.
Retail Manager + Buyer, Mint Julep [ NYC + Boston ] - July 2008 - August 2014
Established West Village location in August 2013. Attended trade and buying shows to select new merchandise for multiple locations seasonally to achieve a wholly branded experience across all stores, managed order tracking and return authorizations daily. Contributed both copy and visual content to e-commerce and social media sites regularly. Created company blog. Served as liaison to press contacts to acquire print coverage and promote events. Collaborated with outside organizations to create sale events for focused consumer groups. Merchandised clothing and accessories, provided excellent customer service to cultivate lasting consumer engagement and loyalty. Oversaw payroll biweekly and cash sales at the end of each business day.
+ Received Awards from New York Mag, Improper Bostonian, Boston Phoenix, Boston Common for “Best Women’s Clothing Boutique,” “Best Denim” and “Best Customer Service” multiple times since 2004.
Program + Event Coordinator, Parsons The New School for Design [ NYC ] – Sept 2012 - May 2014
Organized and executed multiple large-scale public events on campus including celebrity appearances, academic symposia, book launches, program celebrations and activist initiatives within the fashion industry. Oversaw the orchestration of event itineraries from start to finish, managed technical support, facilities crews, security detail, space setup, catering, and volunteer staff. Designed and compiled press materials including posters, releases, and event programs. Collaborated with numerous administrators and liaised with vendors to build cross-functional teams and achieve successful event and product launches.
+ Received an Outstanding Leadership Award in May 2014
[ Event highlights include: It’s a Wrap: A Conversation with Diane von Furstenburg (featured in the NY Times; NY Magazine; Insights), Fashion Revolution Day (featured in New School News; forthcoming in BBC’s Untitled Documentary Series), Fashion Praxis Symposium (featured in BIAS: Fashion + Politics) and The Conscious Consumer Project: Panel and Pop-Up. ]
Design Intern, Elie Tahari / Tahari ASL [ NYC ] – May - August 2006 - 2009
Designed and completed the Spring 2008 and 2009 dress lines. Worked closely with executive designers to make creative proposals regarding dress bodies, print work, fabric quality, and trim. Designed new prints and flats of dress bodies. Implemented and refined several organizational systems to improve efficiency and quality of output.
Education
Parsons The New School for Design – Master of Arts in Fashion Studies, 2014
+ Commencement Student Speaker May 2014 / Outstanding Leadership Award Recipient
Boston University - Bachelor of Science in Communication Cum Laude, 2010
+ Sigma Alpha Lambda Honors Society / Dean’s List 2007 - 2010
The Hotchkiss School - Cum Laude, 2006
+ National Latin Scholar
Skills
Adobe Creative Suite / Microsoft Office Programs / Quickbooks Point of Sale
Project Management / Strategic Design / Brand Development / Visual Merchandising / Styling
Event Planning / Copy + Art Direction / Graphic + Fashion Design / Public Speaking / Teaching
Curriculum Vitae
Master of Arts in Fashion Studies, 2014 - Parsons The New School for Design - GPA 3.92
Professorial
Graduate
“Strategic Design and Management in New Economies” MS School of Design Strategies Parsons The New School for Design (Fall 2014)
Leads weekly lecture for 16 students, gives weekly lectures on designated unit topic. Sources and assigns course material, liaises with other section leaders, administers and assesses weekly quizzes.
This course exposes and introduces the students to the contexts, the complexities, and the conditions of the external environment (i.e. technological, socio-political, economic, and demographic) of the new economy based on services, experiences, and transience. These in turn present opportunities, challenges, and a new mandate for leadership and innovation on the part of design-intensive and creative firms that are slowly subsuming traditional consulting practice. How to design, manage, and improve those design firms will require new design-managerial capacity. Students will investigate the aspects and angles of this ongoing transformation of and in the field of creative industries and will be presenting research and critique/commentary via seminal works in the field.
Teaching Assistantships
Graduate
“Fashion Cultures” MA Fashion Studies ADHT Parsons The New School for Design with Dr. Christina Moon (Spring 2014)
Led weekly recitation for 25 graduate students based on lectures, graded three papers (1000-2000 words each), provided feedback on student progress, oversaw design and critical engagement with materials, chaperoned field trip, received excellent student evaluations.
This lecture course provides students with a broad framework for the understanding of the significance of fashion as culture, system and industry, intrinsically linked with processes of globalization. Presented through outstanding guest speakers from within and beyond The New School, the course is intended to open up multiple perspectives on fashion in its wider social and cultural dimensions as well as to bridge diverse disciplinary fields in the theory and practice of fashion. Key-issues that will be addressed include the linkage between fashion, modernity, capitalism and the process of industrialization and post-industrialization, the development of fashion as system, intensifying relations to fashion through media culture and technology, the asymmetries of fashion, production and consumption and the rethinking of fashion in its unique potential to shape the future through more sustainable and ethical practices. The theme for this course this year is “The Fashion Body Politic.” The individual and the body can be understood as a powerful site for understanding power and identity – a subject that is subjected, disciplined, regulated, racialized, sexualized, embodied, memorialized, and corporeal. Fashion is also a site for praxis, agency, empowerment, resistance, subversion, liberation and emancipation. This class is organized around three themes (Memory, Media, and Nation; Techniques of the Body and Self; and Politics of Style and Adornment), which address “the fashion body politic” in tandem with broader conversations on fashion and politics which will occur throughout the semester in MAFS. This course is comprised of MFA Fashion Design & Society and MA Fashion Studies students. The main aim of the course to bring students together to engage in collaborative discussions on theory and practice, linking the above issued addressed in the course.
Undergraduate
“History of Fashion 1900 - 2000” BFA Fashion Design Parsons The New School for Design with Elizabeth Morano, MA (Fall 2013, Spring 2014)
Led class discussion for 25 undergraduate students weekly (two consecutive semesters) based on assigned material and lectures, developed and graded several assignments including multiple short papers, annotated bibliography, research paper, written midterm and final exam, as well as weekly tests. Provided feedback both in person and via email on student progress, liaised with student advisors, inspired over 26 ESL students to improve reading and writing comprehension, exercised authority in the classroom. Received excellent evaluations.
This course provides a survey of the history of fashion from 1850 through 2000 with a focus on major designers and silhouette evolution. We explore clothing and the body historically and culturally and reflect critically on the nature and study of fashion and its history. The course is taught through image-based Lecture and discussion-based Recitation.
Research Assistantships
Dr. Hazel Clark (May - July 2014)
Compiled images for over 50 designers in formal presentation for a symposium talk at the Polytechnical University in Beijing. Authored over 30 designer history and biographies. Currently compiling data on ethical and sustainable fashion brands.
Dr. Heike Jenß (June - July 2014)
Designed book covers for forthcoming publications for Bloomsbury:
“Fashioning Memory: Vintage Style & Youth Culture” by Heike Jenß
“Fashion Studies: Research Methods, Sites, and Practices,” ed. Heike Jenß
Recent Papers:
“[In]Vestment: a Proposal for Sustainable Fashion Practice” (Master’s Thesis, May 2014)
+ Presented and Published at the Global Fashion Conference in Ghent, Belgium November 2014
“MADE IN CHINA : a National Mythology” (May 2014).
"The Sartorial in Place of the Corporeal: Preserving People through Their Clothing," (Dec 2013).
"3D Printing: Fashion's Next Fad," (Dec 2013).
“Fashion: a Fundamentally False Propriety,” (April 2014).
+ Published in BIAS: Journal of Dress Practice Issue 2, “Fashion + Politics,” (March 2014).
“The Body Politic: An Examination of Cosmetic Surgery as Political Autonomy in the Late Modern Era,” (April 2014).
“Retail ‘Therapy': Gendered Dress and Its Imposed Formations in the Department Store,” (May 2013).
“Revolutions in France and Fashion: How Marie Antoinette Caused the Gender Divide in Sartorial Styling,” (May 2013).
“Pucci Post-War: Fashion’s Contribution to the Great Italian Mythology,” (May 2013).
“Conscious Consumption: a Manifesto for Change,” (Dec, 2012).
+ Presented in Conjunction with "100% Fashion" Event at the Textile Arts Center and Sustainable Pop-Up & Panel, documentary forthcoming, 2014.
“The Sardonic Sartorialist, Martin Margiela: Subversive Fashion Design and Practice,” (Dec, 2012).
“The Development of the Mediation of Fashion: from Curation to the Catwalk,” (Dec, 2012).
“Female Gender and Its Embodied Dress: Exploring Gender Boundary Transgression in 20th Century Fashion as a Self-Destructive Mechanism,” (Dec, 2012).
+ Presented at Parsons The New School for Design ADHT Graduate Symposium, May 2013
Program Event Planning
Organized and executed multiple large-scale public events including celebrity appearances, academic symposia, book launches, program celebrations and activist initiatives within the fashion context. Oversaw the orchestration of event itineraries from start to finish, managing technical support, facilities crew, security detail, space setup, catering, and volunteer staff. Designed and compiled press materials including posters, releases, and event programs. Collaborated with numerous administrators and liaised with vendors to build agile teams and achieve successful event and product launches.
Events
MA Fashion Studies Parsons The New School for Design ADHT (May 2014).
Student Commencement Speaker - nominated by peers, selected by faculty.
Awarded “Outstanding Program Leadership” from The New School
Parsons The New School for Design ADHT Graduate Symposium, Planner & Presenter (May 2014).
Expedited all aspects of the event, liaised with outside vendors including printer, catering, security, audio visual to host two-day public symposium featuring Graduate student work.
Presented: MA Fashion Studies “[In]Vestment: a Proposal for Sustainable Fashion Practice”
“It’s a Wrap: Diane von Furstenberg in Conversation with Hazel Clark,” (May 2014).
Oversaw all aspects of the event, promotion and execution to direct and manage a successful public appearance on The New School campus. Liaised with DVF’s PR team, outside vendors, technical and audiovisual, and live-stream. Occupancy reached 800.
“Fashion Revolution Day” Event Planner, Photographer, Instigator (April 2014).
Organized and executed a grassroots photo-booth event in concert with the international day-long initiative, to honor those lives lost in the Rana Plaza factory collapse the previous year. The event garnered citywide press coverage, attracted members of the Bangladeshi Consulate, and will be featured in an upcoming BBC documentary series.
“BIAS: Fashion + Politics Launch Party" Event Planner, Keynote Speaker (Feb 2014).
Oversaw all aspects of the event, liaised with outside vendors including printer, catering, security, audio visual to host book launch on The New School campus. Addressed guests in formal speech. Occupancy reached 200.
"Fashion + Politics Symposium: Fashion Praxis," Event Planner & Facilitator (Feb 2014)
Assisted in the orchestration of the event through the creation of graphic content and distribution of promotional materials, organization of planning committees, and acted as liaison between visiting scholars, academic speakers and student facilitators.
BIAS: Journal of Dress Practice ISSN: 2333-7362
Issue 2: “Fashion + Politics” Art Director, Managing Editor, Contributor (Feb 2014).
A journal produced by the Dress Practice Collective which explores the intersection of visual culture, fashion theory, design studies and personal practice pertaining to the topic: Fashion + Politics. Released in conjunction with the Fashion + Politics Symposium: Fashion Praxis, the journal explores such issues as performative dress practices, sartorial activism, national identity formation, and prominent public figures. Boasting over 30 contributors from across the globe, this issue bridges the disciplines of academia, design, art, and politics.
Parsons The New School for Design ADHT Graduate Symposium, Presenter (May 2013).
MA Fashion Studies “Female Gender and Its Embodied Dress: Exploring Gender Boundary Transgression in 20th Century Fashion as a Self-Destructive Mechanism.
BIAS: Journal of Dress Practice
Issue 1: “Fashion + Healing” Assistant Designer (May 2013).
A journal produced by the Dress Practice Collective which explores the intersection of visual culture, fashion theory, design studies and personal practice pertaining to the topic: Fashion + Healing. The premiere volume of the journal explores such issues as transformative dress practices, cosmetic surgery, cathartic garments and retail therapy by graduate students, contemporary artists, fashion designers, and olympic athletes.
“Dress Practice Collective,” Founding Member (Since Jan, 2013).
A New School student-run organization aimed at joining elements of visual culture, fashion theory, design studies and personal practice through a variety of media. We hope to spark conversations and initiate collaborations between students, faculty and members of the greater community. The organization was founded in Spring 2013 with the objective of presenting exhibitions, organizing workshops, hosting film screenings and publishing original content.
“The Conscious Consumer Project,” Co-Founder & Spokesperson (Nov, 2012).
With a mission to provide educational platforms for responsible consumption in the fashion system, this event was held with the objective to subvert and change the existent state of the industry’s operative. Cayla and cofounders participated in student-organized event, “100% FASHION” at the Textile Arts Center in New York City (Dec 2012), and hosted a panel discussion with three ethically-responsible fashion labels: Lallitara, Bureh, & Fula Style. The discussion will appear in a documentary on Fashion & Sustainability, forthcoming 2015.