Program: Fashion Studies
Vicki Oboikovitz was hooked on fashion when her high school teachers told her she could make her own patterns for her own designs.
It's a love that she carried into a career in the fashion industry, where she worked for more than 25 years.
"I did everything -- cutting out garments, sewing them, modeling them, making patterns and designing lines," she explained. "I worked for Caron, a design house in Chicago, as a designer's assistant, a patternmaker, and worked my way up to designing suits and dresses for petite women. Later I worked for Henry Lee, another design house in Chicago, where I was a petite and missy designer of suits and sportswear. They no longer carry the lines I designed for, so it was time for me to move on."
Oboikovitz turned to teaching and has taught garment construction and flat pattern classes at College of DuPage since 2010.
"My first love was sewing, and now I love teaching," she said. "I love being able to share all of my experiences with my students. And when they take the knowledge and run with it, it is a great feeling.
"In fact, the students here at COD have showed me that they are serious about what they want to accomplish and do. And they have inspired me to get myself back into the designing mood."