Like many little girls, Lynne Dixon-Speller’s first foray in fashion started with Barbies and paper dolls. But her love for the craft of designing and making clothes stood the test of time. Her mother was a master seamstress.
One summer, when Dixon-Speller was in her early teens, her grandmother Edessa – also a master seamstress – moved into the family’s home in Tennessee. “She honed my craft, teaching me not only to sew at a higher level, but with the mind of a perfectionist,” she says.
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Decades later, Dixon-Speller has similarly influenced a generation of fashion designers-to-be. She began college at age 16 and graduated with a degree in interior design and architectural planning.
Her drive to learn more about fashion fueled her to earn advanced degrees in apparel and textiles, after which she taught apparel design at the university level in Delaware and won numerous accolades for her own fashion designs – including a garment in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Her husband’s job brought the couple to Milwaukee, where she taught design at MATC, Mount Mary and the Art Institute of Wisconsin. Just about five years after starting, Dixon-Speller became dean and campus director of the Art Institute of Wisconsin. The school in the Third Ward closed its doors in 2017, leaving many hopeful students without the degrees they’d worked hard to earn. Dixon-Speller was determined to do something about it.
After five years of navigating a tangled web of bureaucracy, staffing and fundraising, Dixon-Speller in 2022 officially opened Edessa School of Fashion, named after her grandmother. It’s the only dedicated fashion school in the Midwest, the first minority-led and -founded four-year college in Wisconsin and the first four-year fashion college in the US with minority leadership.
Nearly half of the student body comes from the Art Institute, learning under expert designers from around the country – and it’s drastically more affordable than other fashion schools.
The school celebrated its first student graduation on May 27, 2024, exactly 104 years after Dixon-Speller’s grandmother Edessa graduated from college. Tenacity, along with design know-how, must be in Dixon-Speller’s genes: Both women faced significant barriers pursuing their goals, but ultimately proved tenacious in their drive. “I think she would be extremely proud,” says Dixon-Speller.
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