Zac Posen and Jane Avrich

Zac Posen debuted his ready-to-wear collection in February 2002, in New York City.  The presentation captured the attention of key fashion editors and retailers, signaling the presence of a new force within international fashion.  Zac Posen is now a global luxury lifestyle brand presenting four ready-to-wear collections per year.  The collection, which is comprised of day wear, suiting, and evening wear, is for a sophisticated, feminine, strong woman of a diverse age range.  In addition to ready to wear, the Zac Posen luxury vocabulary also includes fur, leg wear, body wear, shoes and handbags.

Born in October 1980, Zac Posen was raised in lower Manhattan, the son of Stephen Posen, an artist, and Susan Posen, a corporate lawyer.  At age fourteen he attended the pre-college program at Parson’s School of Design.  For three years Posen was mentored by curator Richard Martin at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  At eighteen he was accepted into the womenswear degree program at London’s Central Saint Martins University.  During his tenure in London, Posen continued to develop and perfect the demanding craftsmanship and vision for which he is now famous.  In 2001, Posen constructed a gown entirely made from thin leather strips and dress-maker hooks and eyes that delivered a powerful commentary about the female figure.  The gown was acquired by the Victoria and Albert Museum and featured in their “Curvaceous” exhibit.

Upon returning to New York in 2001, Posen set up an atelier in his parents’ living room.  A year later he was chosen to present a capsule collection at GenArt’s “Fresh Face in Fashion.”  Following the success of this presentation, Posen established his design studio in Tribeca.  Zac Posen continues to receive awards and accolades, most notably the CFDA’s 2004 Swarovski/Perry Ellis Award for ready-to-wear.  Posen’s strong, feminine aesthetic has become a favorite of style leaders including Kate Winslet, Cameron Diaz, Jennifer Lopez, Helen Mirren, Mischa Barton, Beyoncé Knowles and many more.

The Tribeca studio – led by Alexandra Posen, the company Creative Director and Zac Posen’s sister – is the center of Posen’s design universe.  Over the past five years, the Zac Posen atelier has grown from a single-room studio into today’s coterie of 49 employees, including expert artisans and determined entrepreneurs, building a global luxury brand.

The Zac Posen line is found in top retailers all over the world including Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, Harvey Nichols, Holt Renfrew and Vakko.

 

Jane Avrich is an English teacher at St. Ann’s School in Brooklyn, New York.  She is also the author of The Winter Without Milk, which is a collection of short stories.

Ms. Avrich’s thoughts on teaching and her recollections of having Zac Posen as her pupil are reflected in this interview:

TeachersCount: A couple of basics: what grade and subject did Zac have you for as his teacher?  How many years have you been teaching?
Jane Avrich: I have been teaching English for eighteen years, sixteen of them at Zac’s school, Saint Ann’s, an innovative, unconventional school in Brooklyn.  Saint Ann’s was set up to encourage gifted students to explore their creative inclinations. Zac was a senior in my elective, “The Loss of Innocence in Literature”—at Saint Ann’s the teachers design their electives according to their specialties. In “Loss of Innocence,” we read Milton’s Paradise Lost and Dante’s Inferno, among other works of drama, poetry and prose.  The students did a great deal of creative writing too—stories, poems and plays that Zac brought to a new level of visual glory.

TC: What's your favorite part of being a teacher?
JA:I love the excitement between the students and teacher when the books come alive and everything clicks. I conduct my classes as a discussion, the kids pushing their desks together and sharing their thoughts and discoveries, and best of all, listening to one another, one of the most important skills the students will ever learn.  And I love the element of the unexpected.  No matter how many times I’ve taught a work—Hamlet, The Great Gatsby, 1984—I never know what’s going to happen once class starts.  Shakespeare said, “All the world’s a stage,” and the classroom is its very own stage, where learning is unscripted and books come to life.  I’ll bring in a sonnet and the kids will run with it, thrilled with the language, the wit, the metaphors, and suddenly they’re teaching one another and me as well.

TC: How does being a teacher fit in with being a writer?  Does teaching help you write and vice versa?
JA: Definitely; it works both ways.  My job allows me to read and talk about literature, to think about new voices and new techniques.  The creative assignments generated in class—some of them involving pretty wacky wordsmithing—are so refreshing.  I’ll even do one or two with the students; I find them very freeing and fun. And the kids write such amazing stuff—hearing it aloud is another of my favorite parts of teaching.  Writing can be an isolating experience, but the liveliness and openness of the classroom provides a welcome outlet. Teaching allows me to role-play too; for example, when I teach fifth grade grammar, I adopt the persona of Mistress Jane, a strict, shrieky Puritan schoolmarm who doles out demerits and dunce caps.  When I write, I often do so in persona, telling weird tales out of the perspectives of bizarre characters.

TC: Zac's work as a fashion designer is all about creativity.  Was his creativity evident when he was your English student?
Oh, absolutely, every day. His entire presence was creative—visual, sensual, innovative and unique. He read creatively, envisioning practically every scene in every book.  He would describe the shimmering scales of the serpent in the Garden of Eden, for example, his words so slinky and sinuous and gleaming that the entire class could see that naughty reptile before their eyes.  He wrote beautifully too; I’ll never forget his memories of his earliest efforts as a designer—the images of a four-year-old Zac dressing Barbies in colored cellophane and green rubber foam.  Zac often delighted the class with performance pieces, staged and decorated with great panache. Once he turned the classroom into an Edenic paradise.  Silvery music played in the background, iridescent fabric swirled, paper flowers bloomed, and glitter rained down around us.  At the end, Zac set fire to a dollar bill and bowed among the tiny winking embers.  He was a magician.

TC:What do you most recall about having Zac as your student?
JA: What don’t I recall?  Zac, as you can imagine, was an extremely memorable young man, blinking up at a teacher in his faux fur coat as he thumbed through his volume of The Divine Comedy.  I remember Zac’s papers, his stories, his gleeful laugh, his generous rushes of words and his insights during our class discussions. I remember how warm and attentive he was to the other students, listening and responding to them with such respect and zest. I also remember how hard Zac worked: he never missed a class, he was never a minute late, and he never shirked a single assignment.  He was always eager to improve his skills, taking my criticism so constructively and respectfully—and I can be tough, a real nitpicker, just ask him! I remember what a wonderful reader he was, discussing the characters as if he knew them personally—Milton’s tormented anti-hero Satan, the lissome apple-munching Eve.  He practically inhabited each level of Dante’s Hell, his eyes widening in horror and delight as he entered the great Gorgon gate or the desiccated Wood of Suicides. I remember his avid appreciation for language—the gorgeous descriptions and turns of phrase of some of literature’s most difficult epics; we’re talking Paradise Lost here, not Fox in Socks (although if Zac were to design the socks, well, that would be high art, no to mention a much foxier fox). 

TC: Why do you think Zac chose you as his favorite teacher (not to make you blush!)?
JA: Maybe Zac and I worked so well together because we have similar sensibilities. We’re both very visual and a bit dramatic and we enjoy bright things—shining objects, shining words. We love epic tales and ludicrous moments and complex characters who clatter and struggle.

But most of all, I think that Zac really wanted to learn what I was teaching. In some ways, I’m old fashioned, I run a tight ship, and I think Zac appreciated that.  He listened to every word.  He nodded eagerly.  He took notes.  He laughed at all my jokes!  Zac was extremely present. He loved the material and I think that he enjoyed how much I loved it too. He’d always show up with that grin on his face as if he couldn’t wait to see what would happen in the next forty-five minutes. Neither could I.

TC:What do you wish everyone understood about teaching?
JA: Good teaching is active.  Teachers should know and love their subjects and work hard to show the children how to know and love it too.  It’s essential that we make the material accessible to students so that they can grasp it, devour it, and want to learn more. Teachers should pay attention to their students’ reactions and teach them to pay attention to one another—to listen, to be considerate, to support one another and grow together. Being a good student should come with respect and dignity—it shouldn’t mean being a nerd, geek, dork, or loser. Indeed, teachers should encourage their students to be different, unique—in a word, themselves—and to be proud of their instincts and to voice them openly.

The problem, I think, is that teaching is both idealized and undervalued in a society whose attitudes are increasingly anti-intellectual. Teaching is hard work and worth it and people should know that.  But students have to be responsible too; the classroom should be an exciting, dynamic place where children bear down and learn new skills. Education must be a commitment on both sides or it simply won’t work. 

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