I’d known my mother planned to attend the Chouinard Art Institute right after high school, study fashion design there, then set the fashion industry on fire, since I was a little kid. From the age of 8 or 9, I knew I was going to be an animator, working for Walt Disney, when I grew up, so discussions of Chouinard and Disney’s close affiliation with the school came up often.
My mother is a powerhouse, always involved with several complicated creative projects at once: oil painting, ceramics, PTA President, Den Mother, poetry, local drama, sewing, knitting, etc. You wouldn’t believe the Halloween costumes she designed and fabricated for me and my four younger siblings over the years: Hollywood quality. She closely followed the career of Edith Head, a Chouinard grad, by the way.
Disney died the year before I graduated from high school. My dream of animating for him died with this legend. During my senior year in high school, I started attending Saturday life drawing classes at Chouinard. One of my high school art teachers, Mrs. Pardoe, arranged and encouraged these sessions. At the end of the year, I applied to all the art schools Mrs. Pardoe recommended: The Art Center, Long Beach State and Chouinard. I was fortunate to be accepted by all 3, but chose Chouinard. It seemed to fit me best.
Many years after my graduation, I was reading a biography of my mother in a high end porcelain doll magazine. She’d added doll making and, more importantly, the design and fabrication of original doll clothes design to the many things she does. In the article she elaborated on why she never attended Chouinard, revealing a fact, that in all our one on one conversations about Chouinard, she’d never shared with me before.
Like myself, my mother had applied and been accepted to Chouinard after graduating high school. This was at the end of World War II. The art school told her, yes, we’d love to have you, but we have to put you at the back of the entry line, behind all the WWII GI’s returning from the war and entering the school through the GI Bill. They said they’d call her, as soon as there was an opening.
Months went by, then years, but finally she got her call. She told them she wouldn’t be attending. In the interim, she’d married my father and was now 8 months pregnant with her first child: Me!
She never attended Chouinard, but did get the necessary fashion design training she required at Los Angeles Trade Technical College and with my youngest brothers in high school, began an over 30 year career as a fashion designer, creating for some of the biggest labels in the industry.
I love you mom!
This is such a sweet story. 😀
Thanks, Eriq, glad you enjoyed it!
My parents met at Chouinard in the early 1950s, married in ‘54 and lived at 726 S Grandview St., across from the school and near MacArthur Park. She too had dreams of fashion design, but instead had 5 children, somehow still managing to stay creative by designing school costumes and programs, painting and sewing, etc., etc.
My dad kept us clothed and fed by working in newspaper art departments. Now, with both my parents gone, I find myself romanticizing what might have been, had they not had 5 children…I miss them terribly.
Thanks for this. It opened the floodgates (in a good way).
Thank you for sharing your similar family story. I’m sure you’re parent received great joy from their family. My mom’s favorite design projects were the costumes she created for her kids, where her creativity was unfettered by bosses or trends in the fashion industry.
Great story! That’s my photo of the building. And that’s my Austin Healey Sprite! I graduated from Chouinard in 1969. Many of my photos were used in a book written about the school.
Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it. I remember that Healey…we were there at the same time. I was there from ’67 graduating in ’71. Sorry, should have searched better for photographer info, so I could have given you proper credit. I’ll try to remedy that soon.