Don’t go shopping with Clair McClure.
Sure, she’s taught fashion merchandising courses in the University of Georgia’s College of Family and Consumer Sciences for more than a decade, but an intro to textiles class her freshman year of college permanently altered the experience.
Wandering through shops with her mom in their native Charleston was no longer about bonding and discovering the latest trends, but an impromptu science lesson on the characteristics of various fabrics and fibers.
“You don’t want to get that — it’ll start to pill,” she’d warn of a wool sweater.
How about this 100 percent cotton dress? “That one will shrink.”
Of a rayon knit top: “Nope. That’ll get a hole in it.”
“My mom said it became very difficult to shop with me,” McClure said with a laugh. “I had a little bit of knowledge and a lot of opinions. It’s certainly taken all the fun out of it.”
McClure loves fashion, but she was not the young girl who grew up reading Vogue magazine and dressing up dolls for the runway.
Instead, she was fascinated by the science behind the experience: the textiles themselves, the supply chain and the “why” that drives consumer behavior.
A fashion theory course in graduate school ultimately set her on the career trajectory that landed her in the classroom at UGA in 2014 as a graduate teaching assistant.
“It was mind-blowing,” she said of the course. “I was like, ‘There’s a whole discipline here where people study this?’ I was learning about why people choose what they choose and the history behind fashion. It was just very, very interesting to me.”
Now a senior lecturer in fashion merchandising, she often has to reassure people that, no, she’s not judging them for their fashion choices.
“I just want to know why you wanted to wear it,” she said. “I’m just curious. I have no opinions on if it’s in style or out of style. I just want to know why. Do you like the fit? The color? Was it easy to buy? Does it have any meaning for you? I want to know the consumer side of it.”
Even as a kindergartner, McClure loved learning. It remains one of her favorite things about teaching.
“I learn every day,” she said. “I’ve taught the same class many, many times, but because of the way the industry changes and the global impact of things and the way consumers change, it’s new and fresh. And I learn things from the students, too. It very rarely feels like work.”
McClure’s teaching philosophy was shaped partly by her own college experience, which included receiving both master’s and doctoral degrees within FACS. She credits the “amazing professors and mentors” who guided her and inspired her to pursue teaching.
“I want to do that for other students,” she said. “I want them to have an incredible experience and learn who they are. It has a way of coming full circle.”
In addition to teaching a capstone course in the department of textiles, merchandising and interiors, McClure also leads a retail entrepreneurship class called Couture a la Cart in which students operate a mobile retailer on campus.
“It’s the hardest class I teach because I can’t have a plan,” McClure said. “It’s a totally new group every time who come in with fresh ideas and new challenges. The students will be like, ‘Can we do this?’ And I’ll say, ‘I don’t know. We’ve never tried. Let’s give it a go.’ I feel really lucky that the industry I’m in is very interesting and fun and unique.”
McClure stays engaged with the industry through serving as faculty advisor for the National Retail Foundation, serving on the Georgia Soft Goods Education Foundation board and attending conferences.
She also participates as an Active Learning Faculty Mentor with UGA’s Center for Teaching and Learning and was chosen for the original cohort of the Fellows for Transformative Teaching program in 2023.
The training is “revitalizing,” she said, and keeps her motivated to inspire each new class of students – now with the benefit of experience.
“It’s just so cool to see the skill set we provide our students,” she said, “and how this major can take them so many different places. I always tell them, ‘You all will be the changemakers. You are the ones who are going to be in the industry, and I will still be here helping the next you.’ I can’t tell them what their journey is going to look like, but I can show them how it does pan out, and I can prove it now.”
