FTAA Vice President – Jo Cramer

I’ve come a long way since my first attempt at making a garment. At the age of about 10, I designed and sewed up a t-shirt for myself and proudly tried it on…only to cry with frustration when it wouldn’t go over my head. Not knowing any better, I’d made it from an off-cut of woven curtain fabric, not jersey!

Rather than putting me off fashion for life, that experience encouraged me to experiment more, and making clothes became my hobby throughout my youth. However I didn’t make it my profession until my late 20s when I went back to uni to study a BA (Fashion) at RMIT Uni. There I discovered I had a real passion for what I call technical design: using my skills in garment cutting and construction as design tools. The more my technical skills improved, the greater my design capabilities became (or so I like to think!) as the possibilities of pattern cutting and construction put ideas in my head.

After uni I worked in the industry for a few years under my own label and for other local independent labels until the bit of sessional teaching I had picked up along the way suddenly became full time. I am now a lecturer at RMIT Uni where I have the opportunity to share my skills with the next generation of fashion designers. Outside of RMIT, I work for the Melbourne Fashion Festival, project managing the Independent Runway show as part of the L’Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival held every March. This experience and my membership to the FTAA keep me in touch with a wide variety of people, right across the fashion industry.

Since joining the FTAA in early 2009 I have already attended several fantastic events, and look forward to being more involved in the association as Vice-President in 2010.