Experiencing and learning about the fashion industry may not seem something a high school student can do, but thanks to the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising, it is. FIDM sponsors a nationwide Fashion Club program that helps any and every student follow their fashion dreams.

Each fashion club has at least ten numbers, a president, an adviser, and monthly meetings. The rest is up to you! The best part of having a fashion club is the creativity it ensues. You can host fashion shows, research trends, go on field trips, have guest speakers, raise money for charity and more.

Here are some ideas my club has used to help us grow and engage our members.

Social Media:

This is the most important part of growing our club. On each of our social media pages, we promote every upcoming meeting or event and it alerts our current members while also catching the attention of others. The must-have social media accounts for your club will be Twitter and Instagram, but Snapchat and Facebook are great additions. A few ideas to engage your social media followers and gain new ones are...

- Post photos of students and their outfits around school. (Make sure you tag them!)

- Have a club hashtag.

- Host school-wide online contests/giveaways.

- Post a club "commercial".

Memorable Meetings:

You are definitely going to want every club meeting to be as exciting, engaging, and productive as possible. This will cause members to want to come back and bring their friends. Plus, the more excited they are about the club, the more they will want to help. Here are some ideas to improve meetings...

- Food! After school, everyone's hungry. Have a snack sign-up sheet.

- Plan an activity for every meeting. Even if you need to talk business the whole meeting, find a quick activity to go along with it.

- Find guest speakers to visit your club. This can be a FIDM representative, a retail manager, a makeup artist, or even a costume designer.

Something for Everyone:

There are SO many different elements to the fashion industry, so be sure to play off that in your club. Make sure everyone knows your club is not solely about clothes. You can cater to the interests of photographers, writers, artists, tech enthusiasts, actors, and more. Especially when it comes down to big projects and fashion shows, you are going to need so many different areas of expertise, it's good to have a diverse group.