By 11 a.m. Sunday, Sasha Becker, a freshman fashion design major, had been up for hours, running into a New York City Starbucks to get coffee for Jill Stuart’s Mercedes-Benz New York Fashion Week team.

It wasn’t quite anything related to fashion, but Becker didn’t mind.

‘I’ve been sort of all over the place – in the showroom, the pattern room and running errands all over the city,’ Becker said. ‘It’s crazy and different, but I’m loving it.’

Last week, 15 fashion design students from Syracuse University went to New York to intern with Jill Stuart for New York Fashion Week. Some students, including Becker, left as early as Feb. 9 to help prepare for Jill Stuart’s show yesterday.

Held twice a year, the Fashion Week events are a preview of designers’ fall 2009 collections. The events are centered in Bryant Park, but hundreds of designers also preview their collections in other parts of Manhattan, such as Stuart’s show at the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue.

SU students are going to Fashion Week through the Syracuse Fashion Association of Design Students (FADS), as part of a larger internship initiative the club has started for students involved in the fashion industry.

FADS members Timothy Westbrook and Maxi Roberts interned at Jill Stuart over winter break and were able to organize internship opportunities for club members through this connection.

Westbrook said the group’s ultimate goal is to send half of the fashion department at SU to Fashion Week by 2011. While seniors usually don’t have the time to leave school for internships at this time of the year, Roberts said many younger members of the department have gone. With 15 non-senior students going this year, almost 20 percent of the fashion department is in New York.

‘Although it’s all SU (students), we want to be connected to the broader community of fashion,’ said Roberts, a freshman fashion design major. ‘Our program is slowly getting stronger and we want people here to know about it, but also for people in the industry to know. We want them to be like, ‘Oh yeah, the SU interns.”

This week, the SU interns have been helping Stuart in a whole array of pre-show preparations, compiling look boards, creating swatches, organizing showrooms and, of course, getting coffee throughout the day.

‘Even though some of it will be getting coffee, you’re watching and listening, learning and actually being involved,’ said Westbrook, a sophomore.

Laurel Morton, a fashion design instructor in VPA, says that it’s important for students to see the things they learn in class in a real-life setting.

‘It puts theory into practice,’ said Morton. ‘Just being in the environment and seeing what the fashion industry does from the inside, that’s really what it’s all about.’

Morton says that while some students are missing up to a week and a half of classes, it will be worth it for their careers.

‘There should be a provision for it in the (fashion) department,’ said Morton. ‘I’m not counting it as an absence, and I’ll do everything I can to help them catch up.’

Westbrook said some people go their whole lives trying to break into the fashion industry and that this week will allow these students, some of whom are freshmen, to accomplish this early in their careers.

While SU students will be helping with the preparations of the Stuart show, they will not be backstage during the actual event. Instead they will have seats and watch with the audience.

‘It will be my first New York Fashion Week show ever,’ said Becker. ‘It will be wonderful to see the clothing and to know that some of our work, in a sense, will be on that stage. It’s like I’m living out my dreams.’

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Published on February 16, 2009 at 12:00 pm