When Pamed Walters Le Resche, CHEP '82, was 7 years old, her mother took her along to a sewing class. It was love at first stitch. "I started making my own clothes, even down to my underwear," she says. "Fashion became my passion."

It still is. Today, Le Resche is executive vice president of design for the Jones Moderate Apparel Group in New York. She's responsible for five apparel divisions, including Joneswear and Evan Picone.

Le Resche's career has been straight as an inseam. She chose UD because of its design program. She landed a job as a designer the same year she graduated, and she's held design-related jobs since. Her steady course is remarkable considering that the industry has as many ups and downs as a runway hemline. "You have to be young for this business," Le Resche says.

She certainly started young. Growing up in Timonium, Md., she spent hours at the local Jo-Ann Store, a fabric and decorating retailer. She pored through Butterick and Simplicity pattern catalogs. Butterick was more expensive, so she bought Simplicity and redesigned the patterns. Sewing gave her a sense of satisfaction. "I like the creativity involved," she explains. "I'm very project-oriented, and it's all your own."

When Le Resche was 15, she and her 16-year-old sister made their own clothes for a school trip to Europe, fighting over the sewing machine.

In high school, she made costumes for the dance troupe. She also danced and played tennis. In 1976, she won the women's singles competition at the Maryland State Tennis Championship.

She was an excellent student, earning an academic scholarship from her father's firm, Abbott Laboratories. She also received a McDonald's academic scholarship for Maryland. "Delaware was my first choice," she says.

Except for pillows, apartment drapes and school projects, Le Resche sewed little in college. Basting took a backseat to books. It paid off. "She was always a go-getter," says Karen Schaeffer, a consumer studies professor. "She was very assertive; she stood out that way."

Le Resche speaks highly of Schaeffer's fashion merchandising course. She also enjoyed Mary Jo Kallal's classes. "She was so hip, young and fashionable," Le Resche recalls. "She was a beautiful illustrator."

Kallal's talents are particularly noteworthy since not all designers are exceptional illustrators, Le Resche says. "Some don't sketch at all," she says. "They're more business oriented." Kallal, meanwhile, recalls her former student's interest in "all things fashion." Le Resche chaired UD's Apparel Design Club from 1981-82.

One fashion class, however, nearly changed Le Resche's career emphasis. She took a textile science class with now retired Prof. William Weaver. The "very proper" professor lectured on fabric's technical side and on fire-resistant fibers.

Le Resche says she was fascinated. "I love learning about fabrics--how they drape, their washability and wearability." She considered minoring in chemistry and studying textiles instead of design. She wound up with more of a concentration. Partly, that's because she was equally attracted to business classes, which appealed to her practical side, she says.

Le Resche got her first taste of New York in 1980, when she and two classmates participated in an exchange program at the Fashion Institute of Technology during fall and winter semester. It was UD's first partnership with the well-known school.

She found New York intoxicating. It was the hub of fashion in America, and she knew she wanted to live there. After graduating, she spent the summer earning money in Ocean City, Md., where she waited tables and worked in a retail fashion shop.

In October 1982, she moved to New York. It was a brassy move for someone who didn't have a job. "I'm a very determined person," Le Resche says. "I put together a portfolio and pounded the pavement. I'd walk right up to the receptionist and ask if the company was looking for help."

Clerical jobs were not an option. She held out for a design position. In keeping with her character, she didn't wait long. By the end of the year, she was working as an assistant designer at Isaac Hazan & Co., which produced private label sportswear.

The job, which paid just $8,000 a year, required her to commute from Manhattan to Brooklyn. To pay expenses, she checked coats at a restaurant four or five nights a week. She clocked in at 6 p.m. and left at 11:30. "I had tons of energy," she says, "and I needed to pay my rent."

Between 1982 and 1986, she changed jobs five times, working her way from assistant designer to designer to director of design and merchandising. "I changed jobs quickly in my 20s, more quickly than I should have," she says.

At the tender age of 26, she was working directly with clients and managing designers, textile artists, patternmakers and sewers. She learned early to hire people whose strengths compliment her weaknesses.

Travel became a job requirement. She flew to Europe to cover textile and retail shopping. She toured the United States, pinpointing trends and seeing clients. She traveled throughout Asia, the manufacturing center for many fashion firms. While working with Studio Classics New York, she managed support staff in Hong Kong and Poland.

Meeting her husband, Peter, on a flight from New York to London was an important travel perk. The Briton was then working in Bermuda, and she was able to efficiently reroute business trips flights through Bermuda to see him. They married in 1990.

Although Jones has manufacturing locations in Guatemala, Jordan, Istanbul and Asia, Le Resche doesn't travel as much today. "We have teams that do that," she explains. She does, however, make frequent flights to England, where she and her husband have a home.

Le Resche's job encompasses more than clothing alone. She helped redefine the brand image of Norton McNaughton, which Jones purchased in 2001. The project involved focus group research, logo design and a merchandising assistance program for in-store personnel.

When she joined Norton McNaughton, she spearheaded the computerization of the design department. "The company had spent so much money and time to expand, and they needed to be more automated," she says. In two years, she reduced the company's print costs by more than $1.5 million.

Le Resche says college business classes helped her handle responsibilities outside the design realm. "Thank goodness for the University of Delaware," she says. "You have to be well-rounded. It's not just a business about designing pretty clothes. You have to make money for the company."

Despite her interest in all things fashionable, she eschewed working for big name designers. She credits her upbringing in suburban Maryland for her interest in moderately priced apparel. "I love dressing the masses in affordable clothing that looks terrific," she says. "It's for the ladies I grew up around."

Nevertheless, the business of creating clothing with mass appeal is just as fast-paced as the world of high fashion. Jones holds a two-week "market" eight times a year. Buyers inspect new merchandise and place orders. "It's critical that the product is perfect," Le Resche says.

Le Resche's typical workday begins at 7 a.m. and often doesn't end until 9 p.m. She commutes from New Jersey. "I've learned to value that time," she says. Yet she doesn't use it for peaceful meditation. She turns on her wireless handheld to peruse some of the 500 e-mails she receives a day.

Her fascination for fashion doesn't stop on weekends. "My husband and I have a standing date on Friday night," she says. "We go to the J.C. Penney at the mall and look at product."

Le Resche is generous with her time to UD students, say her former professors. "She's wonderful about passing on industry techniques that she learned after she started working," Kallal says. Schaeffer has taken groups of about 40 UD students to visit Le Resche in New York. "It was fabulous," she says.

Outside the classroom, students learned firsthand what it takes to succeed in the fashion industry. "If you want a top position in a clothing company, it's very demanding," Le Resche says.

--Pam George, AS '82