Image courtesy of Edessa School of Fashion
Crescendo - Edessa School of Fashion
Milwaukee’s Edessa School of Fashion is a unique institution. It’s the only four-year college in Wisconsin focused on fashion and among the few colleges in the state’s history with Black leadership. According to the school’s president and assistant professor, Jeffrey M. Speller, it’s one of only six colleges in the U.S. named for a Black woman.
That woman, Edessa Meek Dixon, the grandmother of Edessa’s academic dean, Lynne Dixon-Speller, graduated from the Tuskegee Institute in 1920. “We were approved by the State of Wisconsin in 2020,” Dixon-Speller says. “I thought that was a sign. We called one of our first shows, ‘It Only Took 100 Years.’”
Her grandmother taught Dixon-Speller how to sew, and the Edessa School is infused with a sense of family tradition and social achievement against barriers. Dixon-Speller garments have been displayed at the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture and the Wisconsin Museum of Art. She taught at the University of Delaware and the Art Institute of Wisconsin before starting Edessa with her husband, Jeffrey Speller, through a lengthy process of gaining approval from the State of Wisconsin that began in 2017.
Creative Hub
Photo courtesy of Edessa School of Fashion
Anastasia Vue - Edessa School of Fashion
Anastasia Vue
Although approved by the state in 2020, the Covid pandemic delayed Edessa’s opening. First day of classes was February 1, 2022. The school now occupies a high-ceilinged loft on the sixth floor of the Marshal Building, a hub of creative industry in the Third Ward. The labyrinthine space is furnished with mannequins and a reference library, ironing boards and workstations; rooms are lined with tables topped with sewing machines. Edessa has two degree programs: apparel design and fashion marketing. “This sets us apart,” Dixon-Speller says. From the beginning, Edessa have worked with more than two dozen garment companies operating out of Southeast Wisconsin, including Kohls, Duluth Trading, Lands’ End, Jockey Underwear, Stacey Adams and firms with accessory lines such as Harley-Davidson and Milwaukee Tool.
The objective is that graduates will find work in their field. Students learn applied product development in apparel design, a process that involves developing a product from concept to finished product, including specs, cost and sourcing.
With America’s student debt problem in mind, Edessa keeps tuition fees low. Dixon-Speller calls the school “a comfortable place for non-traditional students.” Currently, Edessa’s youngest student is 19, its oldest is 70 and the average students are in their 30s with day jobs and family responsibilities. To better accommodate them, classes are held in the evening. “We have one of the most diverse student bodies in the state,” Dixon-Speller says. The faculty is also impressive and includes former designers from Gap and Ralph Lauren and a Walmart purchasing director.
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Photo courtesy of Edessa School of Fashion
Gregory Vajda of the Huntsville Symphony Orchestra
Gregory Vajda of the Huntsville Symphony Orchestra
Edessa’s next event, “Haute List: Crescendo,” is a partnership with the ACLU of Wisconsin and the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. The Bradley Symphony Center’s atriums and grand staircase will provide an elegant setting for the display of student and faculty work as well as contributions by guest designers. Guests are encouraged to wear black to offset the white interior. The theme of “Crescendo” is raising one’s voice in our troubled time. “Crescendo means raising the intensity, the volume,” Dixon-Speller explains, symbolizing the importance of protest and civil disobedience. One of the models will be onetime Negro League baseball player, Dennis Biddle, who faced the color barrier that once kept Black athletes from professional sports.
“Crescendo” will have many moving parts, including exterior projections, a celebration of Stacey Adams shoes’ 150th anniversary and live music with James Dixon singing Black spirituals and a performance by cellist Malik Johnson.
For tickets and more information, visit edessa.fashion/haute-list-crescendo-2026
