IBM Inventor Childress Presenting Award for Best Collaborative Garment at Enclothe Fashion Show

Photo by Micayla Scott

The annual Enclothe fashion show, featuring garments created by students in Bumpers College's apparel merchandising and product development program, is Thursday at the Fayetteville Town Center.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Rhonda Childress, vice president, fellow and master inventor at IBM, will be a special guest at this week's apparel merchandising and product development Enclothe fashion show, and will present an award for the best collaborative effort on a garment at the event.

Enclothe: Timeless is at 8 p.m. Thursday, April 12, in the Fayetteville Town Center, and collaboration is definitely a theme this year.

The annual spring event showcases outfits created and designed by apparel students in the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences. A limited number of tickets to Enclothe: Timeless are still available and can be purchased at the door on Thursday for $50.

Apparel merchandising and product development students have partnered with students in electrical engineering, horticulture, computer science, computer engineering, business, marketing and the Tesseract Center for Immersive Environments and Game Design to showcase fashion, technology and design. Students from Elkins High School are also participating.

Each group brought a unique skill set and perspective to this year's show, and all those elements will be on display Thursday.

In addition, several students in apparel merchandising and product development are working with electrical engineering students on designs for garments. The collaboration award goes to the students with the best combined effort in those two disciplines.

The members of the winning team will also web stream into a presentation Childress is giving later this month in Austin, Texas.

About the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences: Bumpers College provides life-changing opportunities to position and prepare graduates who will be leaders in the businesses associated with foods, family, the environment, agriculture, sustainability and human quality of life; and who will be first-choice candidates of employers looking for leaders, innovators, policy makers and entrepreneurs. The college is named for Dale Bumpers, former Arkansas governor and longtime U.S. senator who made the state prominent in national and international agriculture.

About the University of Arkansas: The University of Arkansas provides an internationally competitive education for undergraduate and graduate students in more than 200 academic programs. The university contributes new knowledge, economic development, basic and applied research, and creative activity while also providing service to academic and professional disciplines. The Carnegie Foundation classifies the University of Arkansas among only 2 percent of universities in America that have the highest level of research activity. U.S. News & World Report ranks the University of Arkansas among its top American public research universities. Founded in 1871, the University of Arkansas comprises 10 colleges and schools and maintains a low student-to-faculty ratio that promotes personal attention and close mentoring.