How to make it in the arts: fashion design

Maeve Martinelli ’27

Editor’s Note: This year in the Scholium Arts Section, we realized that it’s our job not only to inform EA students, faculty, and staff about artistic happenings within and outside the Academy, but also to help uplift arts students who want to pursue a career in the arts. Through sharing stories of successful arts alumni, arts students are empowered to follow their passions, rather than force themselves into a “safer” field. 

We’re kicking off this series by highlighting Mindy Menkowitz Scheier, fashion designer and founder of Runway of Dreams, a non-profit organization that creates accessible clothing for people with disabilities. 

Graduating from the fifth class of women at the Academy in 1989, Mindy Menkowitz Scheier always knew that she wanted to be a fashion designer. “So I actually always wanted to be a fashion designer, even when I was at Episcopal,” Scheier reminisces. “I think I pushed the boundaries of the uniform probably more than any other student in the history of Episcopal,” she adds with a laugh. 

During her years at EA, Scheier took every opportunity to refine her skills. “I really… took any art-related [class], but I also supplemented outside of school in terms of learning how to sew and things like that.” Later, due to her pre-planned major, Scheier applied only to colleges with fashion design programs. She remarks, “I really, really feel lucky that I always knew what I wanted to do. It was just a direct path…I went to school and majored in fashion design. I studied abroad through FIT (The Fashion Institute of Technology) in Italy.” 

Scheier secured her career by participating in fashion internships during her college years. “When I was in college, I did internships in New York City every summer after my freshman year…I worked for a small women’s wear brand called Delah McKay, and thankfully, during that last interview, she offered me a job. So I was really, really lucky to go into my senior year of college with a job that’s really as an assistant designer.”

Once out of college and working as an assistant designer, Scheier’s dreams began to take flight. “I…always had very grand visions, and my EA besties can tell you that I was never a small thinker, and I always wanted to be a big global brand. …So when I started my career, I was doing fairly well. I certainly wasn’t a global brand, but I definitely was climbing the ladder. And I was also fortunate enough to have it all, as I, in my opinion, have it all. I got married and I had three kids,” she notes. 

However, Scheier’s career took a sharp turn when her middle child, Oliver, was born with rigid spine muscular dystrophy, causing significant muscle weakness. 

“When he was of school age, we really had to think about what he was going to wear to school…he really struggled with doing buttons, especially wearing jeans or things 

that required more strength to do. So, he wore sweatpants every single day to school until he was eight years old, and he came home from school and said, ‘I want to wear jeans like everybody else,’” Scheier shares. “It really was a game-changing, kick in the stomach, really difficult moment in my life: here I was dedicated to the fashion industry as a career, and couldn’t solve my own son’s problem…I decided to change my path in my career and have a small goal of changing the fashion industry to be inclusive of people with disabilities, and Runway of Dreams was born.”

Since the creation of Runway of Dreams, Scheier has had tons of success, even if it took a while for the business to get off the ground. “Success is understanding that failure is just feedback, meaning that, when I first started, I received an absurd amount of no’s…it was generally: ‘Well, love this. Love your gumption. I think it’s amazing what you’re doing, but nobody’s ever done this before.’ There were no mainstream brands in this adaptive space; they really didn’t even understand what that was,” Scheier notes. “[They weren’t] going to take a chance on something that’s never been done before…It would have been really easy to say…maybe I’m wrong, maybe this isn’t going to happen. But fortunately, I think because of the personal and professional [reasons] for me that I felt like I had no choice but to keep going, because this was about my son and him growing up in a world that actually had products for him and the 1.3 billion people on our planet that have a disability.”

But, after many long hours of work, she figured out a way to succeed. “I think that just because no one has done it before, just because it might be something different than what our world is used to, doesn’t mean it’s wrong. So having those continuous walls that were being put up for me only made me work harder to figure out how to get around them…I had to figure out a pivot, and that’s actually why Runway of Dreams became a nonprofit,” she adds, “because being for profit wasn’t working…It wasn’t until I became a nonprofit that doors started opening, because then it wasn’t so much of a financial risk if I was wrong.”

Despite hardships along the way, Scheier truly loves her job. After the success of Runway of Dreams, and their partnership with Tommy Hilfiger in 2016, she founded another company, GAMUT Management, which helps brands to use inclusive practices with their products and marketing. “…Every single day is different. If you are a structured Type A person, this may not work for you, but for me, it really does. I’m definitely on my computer by 10 am and dealing with incoming emails, planning for upcoming shows…So between the two companies, I kind of wake up every day, and there’s always ‘We need to do this. We need to do that. What are your thoughts on this? We have a little fire over here that we need to put out.’ ”

To make it this far in her career, Scheier had to be tough. “Being in the fifth class of girls in the history of … EA really helped me to be a bit of a fighter and have grit. Because EA was learning and growing from having girls in a very classic all-boys school, there were a lot of things that we as women going through had to raise our hands and say, ‘I think we need to rethink that’, or ‘That way isn’t going to work’. I think maybe even subconsciously…that might have set me on the path to raise my hand and say, ‘All right, we’re here now. Let’s make change happen. You made the important change to include women. So let’s really include women.’ And it is really amazing to see…It just fills my heart to see so much change that has happened.”

Scheier wants to give the EA student body some advice for life at and beyond EA: “There are talkers and there are doers out there. And I think, especially coming out of Episcopal Academy, be a doer. Don’t just talk about what you want to do or how you’re going to do it and all of that, actually do it, and if you fall on your face, good for you,” she reflects. “You did it. You took a chance. And falling on your face, actually, is a gift, because it helps you look at the situation and say, ‘Okay, where do I need to go? What were the challenges and how do I need to approach them? Is there another way?’ Take it from somebody who has fallen on their face many times…I started Runway of Dreams in 2013. It wasn’t until the end of 2015 that I got Tommy Hilfiger to say yes; so, sure that could have been viewed as falling on my face, that it took that long to even make any movement. But it was worth it, because it made me pivot, and it made me look at how I can make this successful.”