Maggie Dimmick ’08 takes color seriously. So seriously, in fact, that when she’s practicing her passion for textile and fashion design, she avoids using fabric from a store. “I love using textile techniques on fabrics that I dye myself,” Maggie said. “Otherwise, I feel like I’m stealing someone else’s color!”

This love of color translates well to Maggie’s job as a colorist for Elie Tahari, a high fashion clothing line. Maggie works with fabric mills and dyehouses to achieve dyes and colors chosen by Elie Tahari for a wide variety of fabrics and yarns each season. After Maggie approves the “lab dips,” or small color swatches, the mill will dye hundreds, sometimes thousands, of yards for the clothing line.

Color isn’t the only thing that captivates Maggie. “My personal designs always have elements of hand-beading, hand-dyeing, embroidery, applique, or some kind of fabric manipulation,” she said. Her favorite accomplishment to date is the senior collection, “Saguaro,” she created at Cornell University, where she graduated in 2012 with a bachelor’s degree in apparel design. “The final collection was the embodiment of my personal design aesthetic and textile/construction capabilities,” she said. The collection boasted nine looks modeled at a runway show with nearly 2,000 people in attendance!

Maggie hopes one day her freelance work of costume design will become her full-time profession. From the unique and stylish looks she creates, Maggie is well on her way to personally designing her future.

See Maggie’s work at www.behance.net/maggiedimmick.