"I live right over the river now, but it's just like a completely separate world. I feel like time has gone so fast and sometimes I feel like I need to be doing more but my mom is like 'you're three months out of school, you're fine'," said Jenna Knouse, a four-year field hockey player and fashion design major at Drexel University who graduated in the summer of 2016.
Like every recent graduate, she's making the transition from college life to the professional world and feels like she needs to be accomplishing more and having more professional responsibilities, but right now, this former field hockey player turned independent fashion designer has plenty on her plate; her own fashion line launch sits just on her horizon.
From as early as middle school, Jenna had her sights set on both NCAA Division I field hockey and fashion. She was not always planning to play field hockey at Drexel, but paths changed as head field hockey coach Denise Zelenak noted.
"Jenna was released from Syracuse a day after arriving for preseason because she was injured in the summer and was planning on having surgery," said coach Zelenak. "And as a fashion design major, we were obviously somebody in the wheelhouse, somewhere she was really looking because that was her passion."
Jenna came to Drexel a week after her surgery and coach Zelenak remembers her getting around on a wheelchair when she first came in as a freshman in the fall of 2012. Two weeks later, she was on the field and the rest is history as coach Zelenak says. "A happy circumstance that we were able to get her into our program and it positively affected us as well as the team."
Jenna played in 18 games her freshman year after missing the first four due to her surgery and by season's end, she was named to the 2012 Colonial Athletic Association All-Rookie Team. Over the next three years and 57 games, she started every contest for the Dragons. Not only did she excel on the field as an All-CAA Second Team selection and the team's MVP as a junior but she did so in the classroom, or for her sake in the studio, as she earned high marks, graduating with a 3.98 cumulative grade point average and national academic awards to back it up.
Jenna Knouse, freshman, sophomore, junior and senior year headshots
(Photo: Greg Carroccio/Sideline Photos)
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She's the only person in her family in the fashion industry. Her mother and father, Kathleen and Albert, graduated from the Drexel University College of Medicine and are both physicians. Her older brother, Matt, went into business following his time as a football player at Susquehanna University but is now following their parents' calling to become a doctor by attending medical school. Her younger brother, Luke, is a junior at Penn as a decathlete and a philosophy, politics, economics major.
Her aunt, Annette, shares a design hobby with Jenna as a graphic designer and another person that has helped her step into the world of fashion.
Jenna's earliest interest in fashion came from watching "What Not to Wear" on TLC, a show which premiered in 2003 and ended in 2013 after a decade-long run.
She related one of her first fashion classes at Drexel to another fashion-centric television show, Project Runway. FD1, as the fashion design majors call Fashion Design 1, is a class Jenna took as a sophomore. "You're given some inspiration and you just push the boundaries, think outside the box. They tell you, you need to use a primary color, a wool fabric and something else, to be innovative. You can be creative but functional at the same time, even though our craft wasn't the best when we were in FD1," Knouse recalls.
From sophomore to junior to senior year, she progressed as a designer, illustrator, pattern maker, fabric boiler, seamstress, whatever the program gave her the opportunity to expand on. She did her co-op in the spring of 2015 with Naeem Khan, a high-end, women's wear and internationally-known designer with pieces worn by celebrities on red carpet premieres. While living with a family friend in north Jersey, Jenna took the train from New Jersey to Penn Station every day from May to July as a Drexel junior to work for Naeem Khan in New York City.
She recalls her memories working for the world-renowned designer as a major step forward in her young career. She had a chance to go back to work for him after she graduated. With an interview in the spring of her senior year to work on the production team, Jenna decided to take another path, a path that didn't seem like a viable option at the time but one that turned up, and one that she couldn't refuse.
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"It was kind of serendipitous. I did always want to start my own line but thought it was a good idea to work for somebody else for a few years," said Knouse.
"I had just been in New York City on the interview at Naeem Khan, so I still had my resumes in my backpack. I was shopping for my older brother's girlfriend in Philadelphia, because I do all the gift shopping for everybody in my family, and I was at Knit Wit and one of the workers said to me, 'I love your bracelet.'"
Jenna went on to tell that Knit Wit employee that she studied fashion design at Drexel and actually made the bracelet herself to which the employee asked if Jenna had more products. From there an encounter with the owner of Knit Wit, Ann Gitter, turned into a sales job on the floor of the 50-plus-year old, high-end boutique on 17th and Chestnut.
"And most people would have taken the job in New York. They wouldn't have taken the salesgirl job because that doesn't make sense. But for me it made sense, just the fact that I had my resume in my backpack; it was the right decision because I knew I wanted to start my own line and that's something I've been proud of myself. I know what I want and even if it doesn't make sense for other people, I know it's right for me." Jenna's business card design
With the sales job starting in June 2016, Jenna had an agreement that let her sell her own products in the store which set her brand of jenna k. in motion, a brand that started as illustrations and designs from her senior collection at Drexel. "I'm allowed to sell my stuff in the store and that opportunity and that clientele is not something that a 22-year old normally has access to," said Knouse.
It was official, her own fashion and accessory line would be launching on Thursday, October 13, 2016 in Center City Philadelphia.
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Jenna's products are made to be flattering on all different body types because she wanted to create clothes and accessories for an ageless clientele.
"I want something that I want to wear but also something that looks good on everybody. Somebody who is 60 wants to wear but somebody who is 20 wants to wear. It's sophisticated but innovative at the same time because that's personally how I like to dress and I think it's something that a lot of women want, to be edgy but classy at the same time."
Like most designers, she loves the color black but notes that she is more of a fall color person. Her scarves boast colors of every palette. Her inspiration for her current scarf line came from what started in her senior collection.
"Senior collection is our thesis, pursuing the direction you want to pursue after years of learning skills and taking different types of classes. You work on it for the entire year, so for me that was fall 2015 through spring 2016."
For Jenna, that meant intimate time with the other fashion design students. There was only a handful of them, about 20 between undergrad and graduate students. Her senior collection was taught by professor Renee Weiss Chase. Jenna remembers how Renee helped students get the best version of what they imagined in the three-hour, two-day a week studio class.
"I never would have done the first scarf in my line if I didn't have Renee as my professor," said Knouse.
While a student and a field hockey player, it was fashion to field hockey to the studio to the field. With her mind always creating and producing new ideas, Jenna found that she was at her best when she stopped overthinking and let her creative side take over, both in the studio and on the field.
"I pick a style and I just pick colors and I really don't think much while I do it. The more I think the worse they turn out. It looks too formulated, that's what I think is beautiful about them and why I enjoy fashion, because I'm very Type-A. But for some reason, when I design, I can let go. And that's how I was when I played field hockey too, I could not think, which is not something that happens very often."
Her creative process is her inspiration for what she designs. She takes in the world and doesn't focus too much of her attention on specific designers. Her friends know the creative directors of every brand. On the other hand, Jenna likes to soak her inspiration like a sponge, taking in what is right around her because it's not her goal to imitate; she wants to create something unique and original.
When it came time for field hockey, Jenna would go directly from the studio to the field.
"We were together all the time, literally all night in the urban center," she said about her fashion design peers. "I would go after not sleeping at all to field hockey practice at 5:45 in the morning."
When she was working on her senior collection, she would sit at the Vidas Athletic Complex in the early hours of daybreak while she received ice and heat treatments in the athletic training room before practice.
Like in fashion, she believed she practiced better when she didn't sleep because she thought less.
On the field, Jenna was a vocal leader who could get her teammates going. "She was centerback, so she was like the quarterback," stated coach Zelenak.
Jenna in at kicking back late in the game at St. Joseph's in 2015
(Photo: Greg Carroccio/Sideline Photos)
For that, naming her captain for her senior year was no surprise. "You get the label for what you've already been doing for years," said coach Zelenak.
Sometimes her worlds of fashion and field hockey collided as both Jenna and coach Zelenak noted.
"I brought a sewing machine on the bus. I remember doing illustrations on the bus floors," said Knouse.
Coach Zelenak had the same memories. "She was never not sewing in strange places. She was never not hauling her sewing kit around with all her designs," said coach Zelenak. "She hauled it on every road trip; she would be sewing on all the trips. And she'd be drawing as well."
Having the two outlets kept Jenna on track at Drexel because not managing her time was never an option. Between games on the weekends, practice in the mornings, classes throughout the day and extra hours put in during the evenings, she got it all done.
"There is no question that if you were to ask me who is most likely to succeed, that Jenna would be on track, setting up her dreams and the schedule for her dreams and what she wants out of it," coach Zelenak said. "She was in New York doing this amazing job with her co-op, being an assistant for this world-renowned designer and could still convince him to let her come down to Philly on Fridays for practice and games on the weekends. And she did that all herself."
"It is unbelievable to me that she could do Division I at the level she did," coach Zelenak continued. "And do all the extra things and be this successful in the fashion design program here, being one of their leaders in that program. It's a testament, first of all, to how smart she is, but also how much she wants things."
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Jenn's scarves at the Knit Wit storefront in Center City Philadelphia at 17th and Chestnut
(Photo: Patrick Shatkus)
At Knit Wit on her launch night, three mannequins in the storefront window model Jenna's scarves. As you walk in, Jenna's display is the first thing you see. Ten custom-made, silk scarves drape down the exposed brick walls across from the front desk. All eyes are on jenna k. as her display will stay for a week or two with her products continuing to sell in the store for a month.
Jenna meets with customers and familiar faces with friends and family coming through to celebrate her work. Former Drexel field hockey players Lauren Hibshman, Danielle Grassi and Ainslie Rhoads were there, all who played their final season at Drexel in the fall of 2015 with Jenna.
Jenna shows off her patterns and designs before helping ring up the patrons at the register. The scarves are packaged in hand-picked jars, each with different phrases on top. She puts a mostly white, maroon and gray scarf in a jar called "looking to you." It's named for her mother, Kathleen, who is helping her at the register.??????
Next to her wall display sits an end table with her headshot and a sort of mission statement about her persona as a fashion designer, stylist and writer. Custom-made business cards share her personal details and her line, jenna k. and the initials JK. Her aunt, Annette the graphic designer who lives down in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, played a role in helping her establish her branding.
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Customers come through the doors at the opening at 5 p.m. Some stay for the entirety of the launch, others are casual, passerby encounters looking for the latest fashion in Philadelphia. Jenna points out some regular customers who are lounging on the couch at the front.
In addition to the scarves, there are bracelets on a stand next to two other mannequins in the store. The handmade bracelets are repurposed from plastic tonic bottles and produced on a special machine to get the shape just right. Inscribed on the edge of each bracelet is her JK logo.
She has a successful first night with many more to come.
And with an active, constantly creative imagination, Jenna is looking towards her next set of products. "I'm already designing the next cycle of things and I'm hoping to have a capsule collection, which is like a mini, for the spring with like five pieces. I started with the scarves and the bracelets because I did a scarf in my senior collection and I needed to start with something that I could handle."
She already has a handle on her new life as a fashion designer just a few months out of school. She thinks time is going by too fast and she needs to be doing more, but her accomplishments since graduating speak for themselves.
"I have no intentions of working for anybody else. I want my own business," said Knouse. "10 years, New York Fashion Week. If you don't aim for it, it's not going to happen."
*** Jenna's display at Knit Wit
(Photo: Patrick Shatkus)
In addition to the scarves, there are bracelets on a stand next to two other mannequins in the store. The handmade bracelets are repurposed from plastic tonic bottles and produced on a special machine to get the shape just right. Inscribed on the edge of each bracelet is her JK logo.
