Miuccia Prada said, “What you wear is how you present yourself to the world, especially today, when human contacts go so fast. Fashion is instant language.”
If you enjoy keeping up with fashion trends, have an eye for style, and a desire to turn your passion into a profitable and rewarding career, then a career in the fashion industry is right for you. As a fashion designer, you will experience the joy of seeing your creations worn by people, in the stores or in editorial spreads. Fashion is very hands-on, fast paced and one of the best paying industries today. At the same time, it is intensely competitive and vastly challenging as well.
According to the India Business of Fashion Report 2017, the Indian fashion apparel retail market which was worth INR 2.97 lakh crores in 2016 will grow at a world leading CAGR of 9.7 percent to reach approx. INR 7.5 lakh crores by 2026. The promising growth rate of 9.7 per cent makes the Indian fashion industry very prominent in the retail sector. India has the world’s largest youth population (60 per cent of Indian population is below 35 years of age), which is becoming fashion conscious owing to mass media and social media penetration. It is a challenge for the academia to create specialized manpower to serve fashion industry in different levels.
Engaging institutions
Fashion institutes are incubators and academic partners of the industry. The industry wants to engage design schools in active research for new products/value chain and to sponsor specialist projects. There are many designing competitions and reality shows emerging with such partnerships, creating new opportunities for budding fashion designers.
Nowadays internationalisation is one of the major strategies for some design institutes in India. They have affiliations with universities/institutions in the U.K., the United States, Italy, Netherlands, Australia and so on. Increasingly, students are choosing international study destinations due to the availability of a wide range of schools and courses for higher education, availability of funds, scholarship schemes and exchange programmes.
Strategies
One of the biggest challenges for fashion institutes in the global context is to teach fashion to millennials or generation Z who are digital natives. Danilo Venturi, Dean of Polimoda fashion school, said, “The boundaries of a city or a country are becoming less relevant, because a millennial’s Facebook page defines their identity. Their news feed constitutes their community, replacing traditional geographical parameters.” Some Indian institutes are also exploring online pedagogy, and adopting blended and hybrid-learning approaches for effective engagement of millennials in the classroom.
In a market being reshaped by new business models, emerging technologies and shifting consumer values, there are many new career paths emerging in fashion. Today, many young people are opting for fashion design as a career option right after school or college. This has led to an abrupt increase in the number of fashion institutes across the country offering qualification from bachelor’s to master’s degree to Ph.D. Clearly, fashion design is no longer a vocational course, but much more challenging, vibrant and rewarding design course!
The author is a Professor and Course Leader of B.A. (Hons.) Fashion Design at Pearl Academy.
