When it comes to purchasing, promoting and selling an organic clothes collection, Bridget Colella gets an A.

That's the grade the 21-year-old Auburn native and recent graduate of Marist College in Poughkeepsie received this spring for her senior capping project, the final requirement for her fashion merchandising major.

Rather than write a paper or take a test, Colella established a hypothetical business and used $1 million of imaginary money to sell and promote a clothing line created by a Marist student designer.

“I was really nervous,” Colella said of the project, “because our first three years at Marist you hear the seniors stressing out about it. Every year you just hear them, ‘It takes so much time, it's so much work.' So I was kind of dreading it. But it actually wasn't that bad. I had fun doing it.”

Over the course of several months, Colella and two fellow students worked together to establish the business.

Named Tried And True, the idea was to pitch an affordable organic clothing line to Kohl's department stores and market it for women 35 and older.

“Right now we are seeing so much with organics and save the environment, so we wanted to target those women that are shopping organically but don't want to spend $60 on a sweatshirt,” she said. “That was our idea, to have a dependable brand that was cheaper.”

But it wasn't as simple as just pitching the idea to Kohl's. There was research to do, with the group looking into target demographics, kinds of organic fabrics and clothes Kohl's sells. Colella said the hardest thing was compromising with the other group members and incorporating all of the ideas tossed into the hat.

Groups had to put together a binder that outlined the fashion merchandising business model, which were then showcased May 8 during the college's annual Silver Needle Fashion Show.

What she learned while doing the project, she said, was “that you have to really love (fashion merchandising), that you really have to be dedicated to the business, because it's a hard one. It's changing all the time.”

What she also learned was that fashion merchandising may not really be for her. But as luck would have it, an internship she started two weeks after her graduation in May showed her an aspect of the fashion industry she can see herself working in.

Colella joined the crew of “Whisper Me A Lullaby,” an independent film directed by Christina Vinsick and filmed in Saugerties, a small town 45 miles south of Albany, where Colella worked on wardrobe design for five weeks.

“It was such a unique experience because there were so many different people from different backgrounds,” she said. “I was thrown in an environment to make this piece of artwork. I learned so much during those five weeks. I learned something new every day.”

One of the things Colella learned was how much she enjoyed working on wardrobe, and now she intends to explore a career in that field. Her colleagues on the set helped tailor her resume for fashion and film, and she intends to apply for jobs in New York City or Los Angeles.

“Wardrobe is so important because it's the first thing the audience sees before the character opens their mouth,” she said. “It's the first impression.”