Newhouse Senior Uses Digital Storytelling Skills to Pursue Passion for Fashion

Liv Pines is living her dream. The Newhouse School senior has worked for fashion brands Retrofête and Simon Miller, attended New York Fashion Week, hosted her own show on the student-run radio station WERW and lived in Los Angeles and London for a semester. 

Pines, a television, radio and film (TRF) major, has customized her studies to fit her passions and career goals: the intersection of media arts and fashion. 

Pines’ fascination with fashion started in 2018 in her childhood bedroom in Westport, Connecticut. Daily, she would post an outfit and tag the brands she wore on the Instagram fashion blog “WhatWeWear,” now called “liviebyliv,” introducing herself to brand deals and micro-influencing.  

“I had the motivation to get dressed every morning because I knew I was going to create content with my outfit, and then everything took off from there,” Pines said. “The success of that blog and the fun I had with it as I was getting more excited about clothes each day allowed me to find out what I really love to do.”  

Knowing she wanted to pursue this passion into college, Pines ultimately chose to major in television, radio and film at Newhouse, which offered the flexibility to pursue media and fashion.  

“The new era of fashion and fashion marketing is all about short-form digital storytelling, so I chose TRF because…you have the availability to be more creative and have an open-ended approach to what fashion media could be, as opposed to what it has been,” she said.  

Pines has built a strong foundation of digital storytelling skills, creating video projects that have allowed her to showcase the intersection between fashion and TRF and find a love for creative directing through classes like Producing the Fashion Video (TRF 500), Short-Form Production (TRF 453) and Interactive Fashion Communication (VIS 517) with adjunct professor Joseph Sgambati. 

“Professor Sgambati had specific fashion and design experience, and I really enjoyed learning from him,” Pines said. “He helped me realize my design potential along with my other professors, like Corey Takahashi and Ulf Oesterle. They all coached me and their being interested in what I’m doing then helped me on my own to tie things together.”

Said Sgambati: “She brought a really fun energy into the room. It was great to see what she was doing outside of class and then be able to talk through those experiences with her and offer other ways to approach those involvements while learning the methods behind the production.”  

Pines has taken the digital storytelling skills honed at Newhouse to work in creating content for brands like Hadid Eyewear, Retrofête, SER.O.YA, Steve Madden, Davide Designs and La Detresse. 

At Hadid, she got an up-close look at a potential career in digital media for fashion and the other jobs that interact with someone in that role. Pines managed the Instagram feed while also taking photos, art directing, modeling and other tasks.

Basically, she said, she was serving as the creative director for social media along with Alana Hadid, a designer and influencer who co-founded Hadid Eyewear. 

“I think that [experience] really set me a cool foundation. I had a lot of credibility after that, that I had done this and done it successfully, that I had that expertise beyond just owning my own personal blog to take other clients on,” Pines said. 

At this year’s New York Fashion Week, Pines interned for lifestyle brand Simon Miller in their New York City showroom.  

“From making cappuccinos to styling the model, it was a week full of gorgeous clothes from one of my favorite brands. Simon Miller’s aesthetic, marketing, and pieces are top of the line, and I am so lucky to have connected with the brand,” Pines said. 

She’s just as busy back on campus. 

Pines is completing the Fashion and Beauty Communications Milestone, which is a partnership between the Newhouse School and the College of Visual and Performing Arts. As a Newhouse School Ambassador, Pines gives tours of the Newhouse complex and answers questions from prospective students and their families.  

She works on the social media team for Zipped Magazine, is a hip hop dancer for Danceworks and a member of the Alpha Phi sorority. Pines also hosted “Liv’s Happy Hour,” a music-focused show on student-run WERW radio, completed the Newhouse LA Semester in the summer of 2022 and studied abroad in London. 

Pines is starting to look ahead to life after Newhouse as she approaches the last semester of her senior year. The seeds to her future career are rooted to those days growing up in Connecticut and creating the “liviebyliv” blog from her bedroom. 

Pines is still active on her blog and is an ambassador for fashion and lifestyle brands Parade, Beach Waver, Revolve, Splits59 and more.

 “My first major creative endeavors are probably my favorite,” Pines said. “They gave me such a big confidence boost and they were such great learning moments that have carried me into all my recent endeavors.”

Check out all of Pines’ creative endeavors on her website.