As our last grade for our Freshmen Seminar Course, we were tasked with creating a 10-page paper, a twelve-minute presentation and a handout for each member of the class. Everything would be on the same topic of our choosing. There was not much of a guideline for picking the topic, but our professor wanted us to pick something that we were interested in. After taking a Fashion History class during this semester, I wanted to incorporate what I learned from that course into my seminar class. My Fashion History professor told me about a part of the Holocaust where twenty-three women working in Auschwitz were kept in the camp to make couture fashion for the officers’ wives. This building was called the Upper Tailoring Studio.

At first it was very difficult to find information on my topic. The University databases did not have much to offer about the Upper Tailoring Studio. The sources in the databases were book reviews on a novel written by Lucy Adlington, a fashion historian. This book that is called The Red Ribbon is about a girl who is at Auschwitz and works at the studio to stay alive. I read the book because it seemed to have an interesting plot and I hadn’t read for fun in a while. I ended up finishing it in two days because of how interested I was. I knew if I wanted to do this topic, I would have to do a lot of digging.

I looked up more reviews and news articles on the novel and found out that most of the events and places in the novel were real. I then went looking for the existence of these places so I could use them as fashion. I knew that even searching all these places of Auschwitz would not be enough information for a presentation or a paper, so I decided to broaden my topic. For my topic I would discuss the importance and influence of fashion on the prisoners in the concentration camps. I called my project “One in ninety million” because out of the ninety million google search results for the Holocaust, I decide to talk about this part of the search. I discussed many different aspects of fashion such as the Upper Tailoring Studio, the Schutzstaffel uniforms, the prisoner uniforms and identification, the laundry detail, and much more. Even though I drew inspiration from the novel, I don’t think it was the focus since I covered many different aspects of fashion in the Holocaust.

This was one of the hardest projects that I’ve ever done, however, it was the most fun I have ever had with writing a paper and making a presentation. My professor gave me the freedom to explore what I am interested in and make a presentation that I am proud of. Even though I did not receive the best grade in the class, (I was not even close.) I still had fun researching and making this final project. This gave me experience in expressing my creativity while in a professional environment.