Jennifer Lee was in the library when she found out she got an internship at Teen Vogue, so she and her best friend tried to celebrate as quietly as they could.
“We started silently freaking out and jumping all over (Young Research Library),” said Lee’s best friend and third-year global studies student Brigette Bleicher.
While at UCLA, Lee, a fourth-year computational and systems biology student, said she has worked hard to balance her dual interests in fashion and science.
She has interned at both The Reformation, an ecologically friendly clothing store that also has its own L.A. factory, and Amgen, a top biotech firm. However, when Lee decided to go to New York this summer to take an unpaid internship at Teen Vogue, it also meant turning down a job offer from Amgen.
Lee said her scientific background influences the way she designs. Lee said that unlike most designers, she likes to think logically and analytically about how the lines and colors of her garments flow together and she always has a story line in her collections.
Lee recently started working on the preliminaries of a collection that directly incorporates motifs like neurons and use of immunostaining.
Lee said the collection is based on the neon colors and electric feelings in the images in Life Sciences 3 and some biology lab work.
“(Lee’s) rare in that she’s extremely talented in two things. She’s a really smart girl who’s good at science, but she’s also a really creative, passionate person who has an eye for fashion and design,” Bleicher said.
Lee landed her internship at Teen Vogue in an unconventional manner. In the fall, Lee attended Teen Vogue Fashion University, an annual three-day conference in New York that features top fashion designers.
While there, she asked Teen Vogue’s editors if they considered hiring people in the sciences. As a biology student, Lee said it has been difficult to get a fashion internship because people doubt her commitment to the trade.
After the panel, Lee ran up to Elaine Welteroth, Teen Vogue’s beauty and health director who had answered Lee’s question, and told her how much she wanted an internship at the magazine. They stayed in touch after the meeting, and through the connection, she was eventually offered the internship.
“I sprinted over there. I die after running the perimeter (of UCLA), but I think I ran faster when I was running to Elaine Welteroth,” Lee said.
Lee said that despite her affinity for fashion, she decided to pursue a degree in biology because she felt pressured by her parents to go into the sciences for the promise of a stable income.
However, while at UCLA, Lee said her love of fashion has grown. Lee created and taught a seminar this spring quarter to give students an opportunity to learn about fashion. Deborah Landis, a costume design professor at UCLA, helped Lee come up with her course’s curriculum.
“(Lee is) incredibly engaged, focused, enthusiastic, curious, she’s just exactly the kind of person I want to spend time with,” Landis said. “I think it’s amazing that (Lee) single-handedly brought this fashion class to campus, and its success is a great testimony to (Lee’s) imagination.”
Lee is also the president of the club Fashion and Student Trends at UCLA and has produced over six collections for their various shows.
With FAST at UCLA, Lee organized a sample sale at her sorority, Alpha Delta Pi, and an editorial photo shoot at the Los Angeles Zoo. In the last show, Lee made 11 pieces and got very little sleep in the process.
“They call me the one-woman sweatshop at my sorority. I post up in the kitchen at (Alpha Delta Pi) and I will sew for hours on end,” Lee said. “I think this year I probably slept eight hours in eight days. As a biology major I know that’s definitely not good for you because you need to build ATP while you’re sleeping.”
Lee said she hopes she can combine her two passions in her future career and is considering working with textiles in the creation of new fabrics to combine her two passions. After Lee’s Teen Vogue internship this summer, she plans to apply to graduate schools for fashion design and science.
“I love science, and it’s something I hold very close to my heart, but I definitely need to try out this fashion thing because it’s this itch I’ve had since I was 6,” Lee said. “If I didn’t try it, I think I’d always look back and regret it.”