Barbara Sultan: In Love With Fashion, Painting, And Life!

FIDM has been blessed with Barbara Sultan's teaching presence for the past 15 years. Ms Sultan currently teaches Sketching 1, 2, and 3 in the Fashion Design Department and Technical Flat Sketching and Computer Flat Sketching for Manufacturing & Product Development. She brings to the classroom a colorful background in fashion design and art.

 

A bi-coastal life has taken Ms Sultan from the East to the West with equal success! Born in New York, she went on to attend a specialized high school for fashion design. In NY, she worked as a designer for several apparel manufacturers. In 1968, she headed west and made the big move to Los Angeles. In LA she built up a successful career designing clothes for an impressive list of labels, including Dale of California and Hollywood Casuals. Eventually she started her own sportswear manufacturing company, Da'max, Inc., with a shop on Santa Monica Boulevard.

In 1985, Ms Sultan began teaching at FIDM. Through her classes, she realized a need for better fashion sketching textbooks. Since the books weren't out there, she took initiative and wrote them herself! Now students throughout the world benefit from her expertise. She has published two sketching books, Flat Sketching for the Fashion Industry and Applied Flat Sketching for the Fashion Industry. Her books meet the demands of fashion sketching courses and are useful for all skill levels, from beginner to expert. The books can be purchased online through her website and at both Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Keep an eye out for new publications by Ms Sultan! She has several books in the works.

Ms Sultan has a strong online presence at her website, www.da-max.com, where you can subscribe to her fashion design newsletter, Design News. The colorful Mondrian-style site is easy to navigate and features her "fashion update" and "learn to sketch" section with fashion sketching instructions and tips.

Art is Ms Sultan's second love, which she beautifully expresses through traditional and computer paintings. Her paintings are intense and lively, with lots of bold shapes and brilliant colors. She is captivated by the beauty and power of musical instruments and sends them floating magically through her paintings in a style reminiscent of Marc Chagall. Her lovely compositions have been displayed in museums and galleries throughout Southern California. Her artistry has also been displayed through several murals in LA. Be sure to visit a virtual gallery of Ms Sultan's paintings on the Da'max website!

Ms Sultan loves teaching at FIDM. "I love to keep up with the young styles. A lot of my students pull together four different periods of dress in one outfit!" FIDM is fortunate to have such an interesting, talented instructor on board!