The talented designers who participate in the annual CSUN TRENDS Fashion Show are benefiting from a new investment in their bright futures.
TRENDS is a club for CSUN students with an interest in fashion design and merchandising. Each spring, it holds a runway fashion show that includes students in the Family and Consumer Sciences 476 course, where seniors design and produce a portfolio of original clothing designs.
The glamorous event is attended by hundreds of people each year. A panel of fashion industry judges selects three winners based on trend awareness and marketability, creativity and construction.
In spring 2026, an anonymous gift enabled the College of Health and Human Development to provide monetary awards to the top three winners of the showcase. Students generally pay out of pocket for their portfolio designs, and the prizes help offset those costs.
Fashion design major Reyna Garcia, whose visually striking designs used repurposed denim to highlight sustainable fashion, received the $2,500 top prize.
A Legacy of Support
The new, anonymous gift builds on the donor support that has long lifted the CSUN’s fashion design students.
In 2022, emeritus faculty member Karen Robinette, one of the original organizers of the TRENDS club and fashion show, established the Karen and Leonard Robinette Family Apparel Design and Merchandising Growth Fund. Robinette led many professional development initiatives in the apparel design and merchandising program, and her endowment provides ongoing financial support for student success initiatives, including the fashion show. The CSUN Foundation matched a portion of the Robinettes’ gift as part of that year’s Matador Match Challenge.
For many years, professor emeritus Nancy Owens and her late husband, Joe, who was an electrical engineer for Hughes Aircraft, supported endowments they created for CSUN’s textile laboratory and Historic Costume Collection, as well as endowed scholarships for students in the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences and the Andrew J. Anagnost College of Engineering and Computer Science. Nancy and Joe Owens said in 2006 that they gave for scholarships because they remembered how much that support had meant in their own lives.
Another longstanding endowment, the Rochanak Saberzadeh Endowment, has covered material and production costs for student senior collections presented in the fashion show. The endowment was created by family members in memory of Rochie Saberzadeh, a CSUN student and member of the Sigma Kappa sorority who co-owned a shop with her sister, Roya, specializing in clothing for sororities and fraternities. The shop is now known as Rochie’s originals.
The learning opportunities provided by these endowments prepare students for professional roles in the fashion industry.
How Philanthropy Helps CSUN
The thoughtful, generous gifts of CSUN’s philanthropic supporters create life-changing opportunities for our students. These gifts provide scholarships, mentorship, academic spaces, hands-on learning experiences, and many other opportunities that help CSUN students succeed now and in their lives after college.
If you would like to support the TRENDS Fashion Show, or create a fund of your own, please contact us at development@csun.edu.
