Annie Fitzpatrick

"The AMD program [at Iowa State] is set up to give you a holistic view of the industry. That’s helped me grow by seeing all that’s out there.”

-Annie Fitzpatrick

Annie Fitzpatrick wants to work in merchandising for a retail company. When Annie isn’t studying, she enjoys listening to music, visiting coffee shops, and thrifting.

Annie Fitzpatrick embraces leadership and travel opportunities to gain knowledge about merchandising

In high school, Annie Fitzpatrick found herself attuned to business and inclined toward math. Her interest in fashion works hand in hand with her aptitude for business in Iowa State University’s apparel, merchandising, and design major.

Annie is a design director for The Fashion Show 2020: Modern Awakening, a position that allows her to develop leadership and communication skills in her field of interest. She enjoys seeing everyone’s hard work harmonize while creating the show.

“The design committee works very heavily with the student designers and communicating with them,” Annie said. “Anything from how they can enter their garments into the show to helping them with picking their models. [This position] has allowed me to communicate with different industry professionals.”

Annie’s favorite class is Merchandise Planning and Buying, in which she learns retail math for assortment planning, the buying plan process, and other buying concepts and strategies. She appreciates that her professor brings real-world experiences to the classroom.

“[My professor] was a buyer for Neiman Marcus, so she is always able to pull from her personal experiences and talk about those in class,” Annie said. “[The class involves] working with numbers, organizing numbers, and doing retail math, which is what I have always been interested in.”

During her time at Iowa State, Annie has taken advantage of multiple travel opportunities. She participated in a week-long field study in Los Angeles in the spring of her sophomore year. On this trip, she got to visit different companies such as Patagonia, Vans, and Volcom to observe production facilities and public relations firms.

Annie also studied in Florence, Italy throughout the month of July before her junior year. In Florence, she took fashion marketing and art history classes. By attending classes in Italy, she witnessed applications of art and fashion by touring museums and learning from inspiring professors.

“The AMD program [at Iowa State] is set up to give you a holistic view of the industry,” she said. “That’s helped me grow by seeing all that’s out there and helped me to understand that there are opportunities for me that I may not even know about yet.”