O'More College Class Launches Magazine

Belmont Vision Multimedia, Zach Watkins

Eloise Magazine, a student-managed and designed fashion magazine from O’More College, will release its first edition to Belmont students on Dec. 5.

This print-and-digital platform is the final project for a new class at O’More: Fashion Storytelling and Communication. Fashion faculty fellow Nia Allen founded the course this year to show students the journalistic side of fashion coverage. Both fashion majors and minors could register for the course.

The publication’s content is split between four subcategories: identity, feminism, economics and archives. These themes encompass the primary question the course is meant to answer: how does fashion tell a story?

“Every piece in the magazine reflects somebody’s perspective, identity or experience. I think readers are going to connect with how real and relatable it is,” said social media editor Lyla Biggs.

In her role, Biggs leads the creative direction for all social media content and guides the visual aesthetic. She also came up with the magazine’s name, which comes from Eloise Pitts O’More, the artist and interior designer who founded the original O’More College of Design in 1970. The school merged with Belmont in 2018 while adding its architecture major.

“I thought it was a cute name, but I didn’t realize there was such an awesome woman behind it,” said managing editor Emily Guerry. “It’s simple and to the point but also rooted in O’More. 

Allen structured the course to be heavily collaborative and to combine students’ strengths.

The newsroom design also allowed students to petition for the leadership roles they wanted and pitch their own articles.

The Eloise team also made sure to prioritize quality within the quantity. Most content produced is not a universal product, meaning some content will be exclusive to either the print or digital magazine. Other pitched articles did not make the final cut.

“The students really had to dig deep,” said Allen. “They’re always willing to learn and eager to see… what was happening in the greater fashion landscape.”

Allen said she thinks the semester-long pacing of the project helps students grasp the speed at which fashion magazines operate outside of college.

The magazine also provides students with documented content to represent what they’ve learned, which isn’t common in fashion merchandising programs.

“A lot of times, because fashion merchandise students don’t have physical products, people don’t necessarily remember that they exist. This class helps them showcase who they are and what they think,” said Allen.

By balancing business logistics and aesthetics, Biggs realized that the class' biggest challenge was assembling individual pieces into a single narrative, highlighting the difficulty of maintaining cohesion while representing all contributors.

“We tried to tell a story because marketing today is less about selling and more about the narrative. Every piece of content should communicate something that correlates with the magazine,” she said.

The class is in a pilot stage this year, but Allen hopes to offer it in future fall semesters. 

Students can find access to the digital magazine on the O’More College Instagram for fashion @omore.fashion.

This article was written by Ria Skyer