On the Fashion Fast-Track

Sometimes a one-week trip can change your life.

For Lauren Tessier ’14, it was one of Bentley’s study abroad options, an intensive faculty-led visit to Italy as part of a retail marketing class led by two of her favorite professors, Ian Cross and Alyson Kaye.

“I still talk to both of them on a regular basis,” Tessier explains. “When I heard they had this awesome trip, I knew I was definitely going to go.” It didn’t disappoint. The group visited fashion giants in Milan, Florence and Rome, getting an intimate look at how some of the world’s biggest brands strut their stuff.

“It really exceeded my expectations,” Tessier says. “When we went to Mochino’s world headquarters, it wasn’t just them sitting there and giving us a presentation. They talked to us about their vision for the company and how it’s evolved, about how each piece in the fall collection was developed and how they were going to market it all.”

It was like this all week, from handmade shoe samples at Gucci to mood boards and silk-screened print patterns at Cavalli.

“I was always interested in fashion but never considered a career in it,” she says. “This trip really drove me to figure out how to combine marketing and fashion.”

After graduation, Tessier landed a job at Havas Media working on multinational luxury goods at conglomerate LVMH, and eventually joined one of the top U.S. fashion houses at Michael Kors, where she currently serves as media planner for the Americas. The boost her Italian trip gave her helped jump-start a promising career.

“I always wanted to work on the client side of things, but I knew I had to build a foundation,” she says. “I figured it would take 10 years to get here, not just one.”