Lake Forest College / News and Events / Life-changing opportunities: How the College shaped Matthew Hunt ’92’s career in fashion

Life-changing opportunities: How the College shaped Matthew Hunt ’92’s career in fashion

Matthew Hunt photo
July 07, 2025
Paige Haehlke

Matthew Hunt ’92 has spent his career working for and alongside some of the most influential names, faces, and brands in fashion and popular culture, and he credits his success to Lake Forest College.

Back in 1988, Hunt chose to attend the College for three reasons. First, he wanted to feel like part of a close-knit community where he wasn’t just a name—the opposite of how he felt at his high school of 2,500 students in Louisville, Kentucky.

“Even walking around during orientation on day one at the College, people said, “Hi,” to me and acknowledged me,” Hunt said. “It was such a breath of fresh air from the anonymity of my high school experience.”

Along with that, Hunt’s second reason for choosing the College was the personalized attention he received from the admissions department. After being accepted, he was asked to join the first class of Richter Scholars during the summer preceding his first year.

“Being invited to the program sent a message about how the College personally evaluated my potential, in addition to being a recognition of what I had already achieved,” Hunt explained. “It made it feel as though my application had actually been read by someone and not sifted through filters.”

The Richter Scholars took class through their first year called “Ways of Knowing.” Every week, they were taught about a different discipline by a professor within that field, learning all the various ways knowledge is acquired in academia. At the time, the class felt esoteric to Hunt, but looking back he realized it set him up for what he would experience post-college.

“The class was a distillation of what you should gather over the course of your college lifetime, which is to learn interdisciplinarily so that no matter what challenges might befall you, you don’t get flustered because you know how to figure it out,” Hunt said. 

The third—and, in hindsight, the most impactful—reason Hunt chose to attend Lake Forest was the opportunity to have an internship in Paris. Rather than a traditional study abroad experience of taking classes and traveling, Hunt wanted to gain real-world experience and develop his career while abroad.

Through a connection from two parents he babysat for, Hunt successfully set up an internship at a fashion buying office in Paris. This internship was the turning point in his life, the delineation between adolescence and adulthood; it showed him what real life was like—the good, the bad, and the ugly—and it set the foundation for the rest of his career. He still remembers nightly meetings with fellow program participants in the same bar that served delicious but inexpensive chili.

“Someone would cry every night,” Hunt said. “An internship is overwhelming enough—to be thrust into a world of people who have been doing something for decades—but then to do it in another language while navigating a new city and keeping yourself alive in another language, it’s a lot.”

Through a connection he made in Paris, Hunt set up an internship with fashion designer Donna Karan the fall of his senior year in New York City. After graduation, Hunt moved back to New York with $273 to his name and worked for her full-time.

“The naïveté really kicked in, but I thought to myself, ‘I’ve got this—it’s all in English! How hard can it be? I was successful in Paris, so I’ll be successful here,’” Hunt said.

Two years later, Hunt worked for fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi. Mizrahi had just wrapped filming on Unzipped, a documentary following the lead-up to showing his fall 1994 collection. Hunt worked on the edit and launch for the film, which is a cult classic in the fashion world.

“I worked one-on-one with Donna and Isaac at the peaks of their careers,” Hunt said. “It was a much smaller operation, so we all did pretty much everything, and that opportunity doesn’t exist anymore. To have Donna and Isaac sitting on your desk talking to you was pretty extraordinary. I was very fortunate to be both of those places at the times I was there.” 

“My success would not have been possible without my experience at the College. I felt like I was trusted to make choices, to explore, and to fail but learn how to figure out the way back.”

Matthew Hunt photoHunt eventually began producing events within the fashion industry and worked as the number two person at an agency. Their biggest client was Gucci, who then bought Yves Saint Laurent, and Tom Ford was the creative director of both.

“I produced every event worldwide that Tom Ford was going to attend or be part of,” Hunt said. “I spent probably six months of my year locked in a studio with him. It was a white-hot time in his trajectory, so to be at the epicenter of that was priceless.”

Hunt then moved to Los Angeles where he produced events for brands like Chanel, Prada, Hugo Boss, and Armani, and he even worked on the Golden Globe Awards and the Grammy Awards.

“Had I ever done half of that stuff before? No. Was I confident I could figure it out? Yes,” Hunt said. “Once, I was in Milan in a cab on the way to a brand’s office, and I wanted to vomit. But I thought, ‘How much different can it be?’ And I figured it all out.”

Later in his career, Hunt co-founded the first Fashion and Beauty Division for Creative Artists Agency (CAA), one of the most famous talent and sport agencies in the world. There, he worked with talent like Miley Cyrus and Dwayne Wade to help them bridge their personal brand to the fashion world.  

Now, Hunt is self-employed as a consultant and looking forward to what his “last thing” will be. Reflecting on his impressive career and how it all started, he recognizes how his decision to attend Lake Forest College and his experiences there, especially his time as a Richter Scholar and as an intern in Paris, influenced his success.

“My success would not have been possible without my experience at the College,” Hunt emphasized. “There wasn't a strict, linear path of my time; it felt curated and diverse. I felt like I was trusted to make choices, to explore, and to fail but learn how to figure out the way back.”