Innovating Fashion Education

Introduction

Fashion is a social phenomena common to many fields of human activity, thinking and action. The term innovation may refer to both radical and incremental changes to product, processes or service. And fashion innovation means radically redefining ideas, products and services to term ‘fashion” at large. To achieve so training such professionals are Herculean task. The major challenge in today’s fashion and design education is to invoke such thought processes in nascent fellows who can create possibility in impossibilities, opportunity in competitions, and simplicity in complexities.
“Fashion” has moved beyond the regular stream of glamour to commodity. Creative economy has splurged radical thought processes within the domain of innovation, and so are the challenges. Recently I had an opportunity to hear a greatest example of innovation; it was about the famous ‘bulb’. There were more than fifty inventors to bulb alike, but the one who commercialized was Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 – October 18, 1931), an inventor and a businessman who connected imagination with reality and gifted light to the whole world. The similar approach is required today by fashion industry where amongst value addition radical thinking becomes core of the business. It requires professional who can create new system, processes and methods to leverage existing industries. Besides employing fashion stylists the industry requires next generation of Fashion Innovators who could lead them. The Most fashion designers earn between $14,000 and $1, 00,000, but a radically new concept may fetch millions of dollars to its founder, company and stake holders contributing new knowledge and wealth creation. Therefore “Innovative Fashion” would create value, efficiency and alternative knowledge in the time to come.
Evolving Fashion Education

Globalization and the onward march from knowledge to creative economy have brought immense challenges and opportunities to fashion educators world-wide. To prepare students for successful and rewarding career means preparing them to compete in a global economy. Fashion education therefore demands its Students, Faculty and Institutional Culture, a unique blend of Conceptual, Aesthetic and Application domain. The new pace requires skilled manpower with strategic overview and creative thinking.

As the industry evolved so is the fashion education, early 90’s the focus of fashion education was catering to the manufacturing sector of exports/international market and domestically few fashion designers became well known entrepreneurs (i.e. Rohit Bal, J J Valaya, Ritu Beri etc). The domestic market then was much customized and specific to limited clientele and majority of fashion houses, boutiques were family run, industries were following International trends. The curriculum was primarily focusing on discussing international cases, styles were more westernized and the graduate level education were generic with technical emphasis on design, patternmaking and production know how. The origin of NIFT shaped fashion education to be more authentic/professional career than being considered vocational or home science.

Late 90’s brought a dramatic change in fashion industry, with evolution of FDCI and “India Fashion Week” launched, a platform to share creative aspirations and innovation. This initiative brought all the designers and buyers together that helped industry organize further. On the other hand domestic players in apparel came with their own brands/stores across the country; the organized retailing started occupying its place, and the education demanded more dynamic designers who can understand psyche of domestic market, have ability to connect creative aspirations with business/market realities. This increased demand of skilled & creative professionals forced institutions to become multi-campus to churn more quality professionals every year, to cater to cluster and sectoral specific needs of India. The curriculum and programme/s being offered were made sector specific. (For e.g. NIFT opened seven centers all across India, Chennai saw origin of many leather design programmes and institutes, NIFT-TEA was opened at Tirupur to cater design needs for knitted apparels and NIIFT, Mohali to serve to Ludhiana and Jalandhar.)

During this period most fashion courses lasted for three years, which blended artistic and technical side; some courses included working in the fashion industry, to give students a taste of commercial fashion process. Others offered the chance to visit fashion industry abroad. At the end of final year most students showcased their work to prospective buyers and employers. People who want to become top designers worked with other designers to gain hands-on experience. The past ten years have witnessed demands of professional and human resources development for an expanding fashion economy.

Post 2000, the whole perspective changed from manufacturing to creative economy, the education shifted towards catering largely to indigenous needs. Fashion education devised new curriculum that could create multifaceted fashion professionals, who can innovate system enterprise, business models, and largely products. The disruptive thinking became dominant to such learning processes. More focus was laid towards research based education and higher PG Programmes to develop more specialized knowledge. “Design” and “Innovation” became key areas with continuous technological developments. This era redefined fashion education from”Style/Concept” to “Design and Innovation led” which could bring more novel opportunities to entire value chain. The fashion became more connecting force amongst people globally with their lifestyle and culture. As design took its mammoth leap, the industry and world understood the importance of Indian design and designers and henceforth National Design Policy announced by GOI in 2007 gave “Design and Innovation” much boost and significant position. And National Institute of Design got recognized as India’s first design university.

Multifaceted Fashion Cube

Fashion in design education is like a cubical that has multiple faculties, equally important and connects each other; it looks like a magic box which can reveal so much once opened. Our continuous “cross learning***” created “Fashion innovators” who can function to various domains of fashion industry and can continuously work towards innovative method and processes. This shift originated a unique approach of teaching Fashion/Apparel at NID, a value based learning system. The pedagogical mix at NID was to achieve right balance in theory and practice to create newer knowledge and produce innovativeness. These curriculums clearly defined the position of “Multifaceted Generic” and “Inquisitively Specific” learning that assimilates wider and deeper perspective, a holistic approach to evolve as creative entrepreneurs. The institutional culture of cross learning has been to achieve “New Fashion Hybrid” with multi-lateral knowledge. These “out of wall” experiences contributed by faculty and students of Apparel Design at NID will henceforth suggest on how classroom exercises have become business realities. I’m going to share few cases thereafter.

*** Cross learning in domain of design is a culture where various disciplines like communication, Industrial, Textile and Fashion, Information create cross-idea exchange to make any learning more strategic and holistic.

“India” to “Innovative Fashion Week” (IFW)

The split of fashion week was a controversial subject to Fashion Fraternity, but on positive note it gave opportunity to plenty of young designers and designpreneurs. Be it “India fashion Week” at Delhi or “Lakme Fashion Week” in Mumbai. A genre of young aspirants started producing break through innovation, high quality work and continuous New Product Development. These places evolved as a creative zone which could foster innovative ideas to non-stop and fast changing fashion industry.

This innovative work of Rahul and Firdos begun at the end of their final year at NID, when they started with conceptualizing reversible garments which could be worn from both sides and can bring more value addition to Kerala Textiles, to connect modernity with tradition.

This approach evolved garments which could be worn from both sides with different silhouette and styles when worn from either side. This attempt excited them further to romanticize with Bandhani for redefining and reinventing the fit phenomenon. The stretchable character coming out of Bandhini gave the garments a better fit and even fit to different sizes. These designs largely attracted national and international buyers and promoted the traditional craft globally with more functional and aesthetic value. And finally range of seamless garments this season stunned everyone; these new patterns could fit contours of women body better than even highly tailored clothes. Today these ideas have fetched them business worth half a million in just two years and a queue of buyers awaiting what’s next.

Innovations for the Fashion Industry

The Branded and Retail industry which grew as a very competitive and saturated market, to bring more product diversification and innovative ideas to create differentiation in the existing product range were key challenges to be taken up by these new professionals. Fit for Indian Size has been a thorough challenge for apparel industry, and especially clothing for large sizes has been vacant area of opportunity. Making this “fat fashion” more trendy, smart and affordable could cater to almost one fourth of market size. Diversification in fashion can bring specialized clothing categories suiting to different segments for specific occasions i.e. beachwear, festive wear, resort wear, active sports, sporting, climbing etc. Even the anthropometric study conducted by many of our faculty and students here become vital for industries to redefine the fit problem and issues.

Our student Moushumi Ghosh explores the language of geometry. It’s an outcome of a rendezvous between the elementary geometrical forms and the complex form of the human body. There’s no need for sizing, as it is up to the wearer, to adapt themselves to as many silhouettes one can discover in the garment. Sizing an entire population is effective way of optimizing for mass production. What if -we add a little twist and borrow the fact that mass exists in many sizes an people love to make individual statements and build forms which are easy to manufacture and can travel the peripheries of abstraction. Something like a sari, this drapes with people’s imagination.

Textile student Geetika explored folding garments that can fit into cigarette/small box taking ideas from basic folding techniques. Today the complexity of traveling from one location to another has become more tedious and carrying volumes and loads of apparel is complicating it even further more. This innovative endeavor is to create fashion line that could fit in small bags (size of hand bags) which can accommodate 10-12 ensembles. Extremely light weight, easy to maintain, and extremely fashionable.

And my Paunch proof TM shirt for oversized, a problem that have been bothering almost every wearer. This initiative made them look slimmer than their actual mass, ergonomically functional and a new definition/dimension to sizes for fat and obese people.

Connecting Ends-Fashion as Medium

Creativity is quoted as something “Unique, Original and Novel” that connects society at large with most modern to craft and rural parts of the world. Today with the intervention of Design with latest technology has created a seamless world. And the future challenges are also to train manpower in these geographical proximities which are still considered third world.

One of such initiatives taken up by NID was to design High Altitude Clothing (Team Members: Prof. P.B Jhala, Somesh Singh and R.S Rajsekaran) using angora wool. It has been incredible exercise which helped small clusters of Uttranchal/Himachal connecting to most specialized fashion industry. The development both supported by NID and IPR was done by using Plasma technology which redefined Angora wool’s (eight times warmer than Marino wool) application in varied fashion products. This new technology which uses air as base also became highly cost effective and made these angora fibers stronger, smoother, reduced shredding, and made easy to spin. With use of plasma technology angora fiber became more users friendly, easily maintainable and more productive. We applied this new development for both army and high altitude clothing. And in much social perspective it provided larger opportunity to these angora weavers to fetch better marketplace and value for products.

Alternative Fashion- Road less traveled

A global classroom has been a great learning ground for the young fashion professional that can practice or Contribute new/alternative knowledge to domain of fashion. These alternative sector hold largest market share of clothing and textiles and are relatively more functional fashion sectors For example: Lingerie and Intimate Wear, Maternity wear, Police and Army clothing, Medical and Healthcare clothing and clothing for physically disabled. Many of our projects and classroom exercises gave new shape to these areas.

As a designer for New Gujarat Police uniform I had an opportunity to look closely at “Police” a fear factor for common men, taking into consideration all functional aspects and working conditions of these police personal I realized that I can’t do much to their job profiles but can contribute to clothing which may perhaps make feel them better. The new designs developed at NID has provision to accommodate set of belongings like, PDA’s, Wireless Devices, and Smart Technology devices with chalan books and stationeries. The new fits are more customized to different sizes and body types. Uber-cool uniform that would make the policemen feels cool in summers. These new cotton-blended fabrics would be wrinkle free, with Photo chromatic and Radium badges for better visibility. The fragrance finish is to ease the stress of policemen working for long hours and under diff. climatic conditions and geographical terrains. These uniforms give great protection from bacteria, dust and UV rays.

Student Neelam Prabhugaonkar’s clothing design for Deaf and dumb children with interactive technology helps them communicate with people who can hear, by means of electronics in garments. This garment makes their life a little easier, while trying to communicate with people who can hear.
The garment integrates a battery-run ‘voice-recorder and playback device’ with its design features. The device is capable of recording up to 8 sentences/words which can be played back individually at the push of a button. These recorded inputs are not permanent and can be replaced with different sentences/words. The parents or the teacher can record anything ranging from basic questions to names of the child’s friends. This gives the child the freedom to catch a person’s attention, specifically call out a person by his/her name in a group or to ask for a few things without resorting to sign language. This technology is inbuilt within the garments and easy for wash and care.

Binata Lahiri disposable garments using non-woven fabric have been primarily designed for patients who need not have to give their uniforms for laundering every time at the hospitals or medical centers. These bacteria free clothes reduce the complexities of patient’s clumsy life and make them and their relatives’ life much easier. These bio-degradable apparels even don’t cause harm to the larger environments. And give non woven industry a new market to explore and work towards.

Sonal Kabra evolved medical clothing for arthritis patients. Arthritis causes pain and eventually disability due to inflammation of the joints. The design details cope with the pain and frustration of getting dressed and undressed daily. The range of attractive clothing designed by her not only gives them an ease of dressing but also enhances their physical appearance. This helps in maintaining their self-esteem and confidence.

The Future: I-Clothing (Individual to Intelligence)

Clothing and Fashion is moving from adornment to intelligence, it has become counterpart that takes care of all individual needs and aspirations, be it information or knowledge, biological body, pulse impulse, or interactivity to outside environment. I-fashion has upsurge newest of technology, evolving intelligent/smart clothes and accessories with inbuilt communication and information, moving server, GPS, multi-sensory intelligence etc. This I-factor would soon emerge to be the greatest convergence to self and the world around.

NID student Prasenjit Kundu had invented Smart Electronic Jacket which provides massage/ warmth/entertainment to the wearer as soon as you switch on the vibrators inbuilt within the jacket. “Smart apparel” for busy corporate professionals which is able to provide a multi-sensory experience of complete “Rejuvenation” with personal and quick refreshment, and reduces physical and mental stress. This men’s jacket gives instant relaxation to professionals during office hours or even while traveling.

Kranti Kiran a student of MIT, U.S with NDBI, NID has been working on ClimaControl TM , an intelligent technology embedded within the uniforms which could control temperature in clothing that can sustain human beings to an extreme outside temperature, for instance in 45-50 degree C it can still provide a temperature worth 25-30 degree Celsius through digital control. And at extreme altitude where the outside temperature is very low it can still keep you as warm as you want.