Louden wins Best of Class for fashion design in fair Student Showcase

Olivia Louden was a Best of Class winner at the San Diego County Fair's Student Showcase.

Louden, who was a Fallbrook High School senior during the 2015-16 school year, entered the Fashion Design portion of the Student Showcase. Her submission "It's Only Rock and Roll" featured nine drawings which allowed front, back, and side views of three different outfits and earned her Best of Class for first-year students in the Fashion Illustration division.

"It was great," said Fallbrook High School fashion instructor and career technical education department chair Lita Tabish. "She did a wonderful job, a very creative girl."

Fallbrook High School's fashion department offers two classes which incorporate marketing and other business skills, display and presentation skills, and color and design skills along with apparel creation. Both the Fashion, Clothing and Design class and the Fashion Merchandising course are recognized by Palomar College, which allows students to receive college credit for taking those classes at Fallbrook High School, and the students' work is also featured at the spring Palomar College Fashion Show held at the Escondido Center for the Arts.

"She developed a design line," Tabish said. "She developed three different outfits that all fit in the same line."

Louden developed the design line during the first semester of the 2015-16 school year. "It was outstanding work," Tabish said. "I encouraged her to step it up a little bit."

That included writing a report which addressed marketing capabilities. The work to prepare the project for the county fair took Louden approximately one month.

The Best of Class honor was the first for any of Tabish's students.