It’s that time of year again for Portland to continue its independent design empire by starting young. Sign your budding creative kid up for summer fashion camp. The weeklong camp, run by Tacee Webb (founder of Red Light, Portland Design Collect, etc) heads into its sixth year of existence making it one of the oldest in the country. You can send your wanna be Coco Chanels and Karl Lagerfelds between the ages of 10 and 16 to learn the trade July 16th through July 20th. The fun runs all day from 10am to 5pm and culminates in an evening fashion show on Friday the 20th with yours truly emceeing the event showing off the culminating creations of the course.

Campers will learn bits of an array of topics like Illustration, Fabric, History of Fashion, Silkscreen/stencil making, Reconstruction, Photo shoot, Sewing, Design and Patternmaking concepts. The instructors are pulled from our city’s awesome fashion experts and in the past has included knitwear designer Laura Erwin, denim specialist Blake Nieman-Davis, designers Holly Stalder and Kate Towers and sewing guru Elizabeth Rohloff. Tuition for the whole week is $395, which seems pretty reasonable for a full week of classes from this level of instructors and a fashion show to boot. Scholarships are available through the website for four qualifying students with an essay submission on “Why I Want to be a Designer.” Submissions for the scholarship are due by June 25th.

For additional information, please visit FashionDesignCamp.com and also like their Facebook page. Space is limited so get moving if your child has the same fashion bug we all do.