|
|
 |
 |
| Sunday, 8 February 2004 |
 |
|
 |
Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
|
Catwalk enters the classroom Gearing to meet the challenge of a quota-free era in the garment industry starting in the year 2005, schools and universities have introduced Design Education into their curriculum. by Jayanthi Liyanage
Creating capacity and infrastructure for design education has been one of the major educational challenges in 21st century Asia. The phasing out of quotas from the western markets on which the local garment industry has banked on for so long, has also brought in the urgency to produce a cadre of local designers who, even if they do not replace, could work on par with the foreign experts the industry has been so far dependent on. Then the industry will have to compete to manufacture the globally acclaimed brands in the local factory units, for the highly competitive American, European, British and perhaps, Indian markets. How do Sri Lanka's first three batches of undergraduates of the Bachelor of Design degree, initiated by the Department of Textile and Clothing Technology of the University of Moratuwa, perceive themselves and their prospects in the clothing industry's quest for future survival? "To be a good fashion designer, you need not have a skill in art," commented a third year undergraduate at the Fashion Design Exhibition the department held at the British Council last week, drawing a large crowd of design enthusiasts and educationists. "If you have an artistic mind, that is enough. That is creativity!" "The issue is about making the global markets aware of us," said another student, throwing a futuristic look into the impending quota-free era when the formula of capturing the customer lay in the quality and the value-addition in the local product. Designer labels The forecast also hinted at the long-term possibility of Lankan designers creating their very own labels for the world markets. "For, fashion has no boundaries and we are making our own boundaries." "This is very competitive and stressful but we are enjoying it because we are getting the right exposure," said Dharshana Liyanagunawardena, who, along with the rest of third year undergraduates, has been assigned on industrial training to the garment manufacturer, LM Collections. "Many of these manufacturing companies are joint ventures of local, Indian and western groups. Whether we are to work with established garment brands or to design our own brands would depend on the type of company we are getting into. My company which produces lingerie and nightwear under the label Victoria's Secret, is already designing its 2005 Spring/Summer Collections. A global designer has to think in terms of at least a couple of years ahead!" Comments from Tiziano Picogna, an Italian Design Consultant at Academy of Design which provides a Diploma and a Higher Diploma in Design and is a pioneer among the handful of private schools in Colombo teaching design, give much food for thought on design education. "The common requirement in fashion at the moment for every country is competitive price, high quality and speed in the supply. Apart from that, each market will have differences in taste and needs, but mainly accordingly to each country's different historical and social background," says Picogna. "North European people prefer constructed and colourful garments due to the cold climate and Southern Europe goes for more deconstructed and flimsy clothing." This requires the students to thoroughly study the region in which they plan to place their product. "Worldwide competition is getting fiercer and China is beating Sri Lanka and other South Asian Countries. The only way to survive is to make long-term plans and start promoting one's own products in the west because suppliers will slowly move to the cheaper markets with time and at that point, there will be a definite crisis in the industry if they do not have other means of survival." Reality
"I hope the big managers of the garment industry will consider the designers that will eventually work with them and create a definitely selling product - and not crazy flamboyant divas that come in and "draw" a couple of dresses which hopefully will sell," Picogna is critical. "To the young person who joins us, I say, that the glory of 20 minutes is the work of nine months. You cannot design something that you are not capable of making yourself, and it is a must to know how to cut and sew if you want to be a proper designer." Currently, Sri Lanka's biggest market is the USA, followed by Britain containing a 40 percent of the European market. Plans are in the offing to explore the rest of the European market which carries a potential much larger than the British market. In this context, what is the most significant component of training the designer needs to obtain, in order to become an asset to the local industry? "Exposure," says Priyantha Fernando, Production Director, Linea Intimo (Pvt) Ltd., a knitting and dyeing unit under MAS Holdings Ltd. at Biyagama Industrial Zone. He has been associated with degree course from the inception and has taken in two students on industrial training after a fostering period in which he observed nine students in the manner they familiarised themselves with factory functions and personnel. "Their training must have two components. One, is to expose them to the customers we work with, such as Nike, Ralph Lauren or Bannana Republic. The second is to expose them to the new design trends. Until a student understands the requirements of the customer and what trends suit him, I cannot expect anything from the student." Degree The design function is new to the local garment industry, observes Fernando. "Thus far, they have only depended on the customer design. It is very good that the design degree started in collaboration with the London College of Fashion which helps the degree to gain recognition in American and European export markets." The college's consultancy services are funded by the Ministry of Industrial Development and supported by the British Council. To be valuable suppliers, we need to have the design function happening in Sri Lanka, insists Fernando. "We never had this skill and depended on foreign expertise. The industry needs designers who are capable of contributing to the customer product range and in the next couple of years, we hope to build up our customer design team with the newly trained designers." Creating our own labels is a very long-term ambition in a scenario when most of the new world trends emerge from the design centres in Paris and Italy, comments Fernando. "Unless we create a very strong label, it could be a nightmare. The viable thing is to work with an established label." Pilot project
Can our educational system meet employer expectation, has always been the question. A media discussion NIE held recently under the Sri Lanka Appropriate Technology Education project it implements with ITDG/South Asia, focused on the non-availability of opportunity for students to be creative decision-makers in the manner the traditional technology subjects are being taught. The teacher merely followed the Teacher's Guide prepared by a higher educational organisation and all students following the technology subject ended up producing the same item, which often was of little use. "The introduction of Design and Technology as a O/L subject is meant at directing O/L students towards a professional design and technology education," observes N.T.K. Lokuliyana, Project Leader, Design and Technology Education Project of NIE. "These O/L students will pass out in 2006 around sixteen years of age and they will have an opportunity to follow a tertiary educational course." Yet, the void for design education at Advanced Levels, qualifying students for a university level degree, has still not been addressed. "The NIE has requested the University Grants Commission (UGC) to introduce the subject at A/Ls and we are awaiting their response," says Lokuliyana. Develop professional design courses for students passing out at O/L at affordable levels is a much needed State intervention. "Even if there is no continuity from A/Ls, the Design Degree at the Moratuwa University is a step in the right direction to develop the creative talents of the local youth." observes Dr. Nirmali De Silva, Course Director, Fashion Design and Product Development at the Department of Textile and Clothing Technology at the Moratuwa University. "We had to increase the student intake from the initial 20 to 40 in the second batch to meet the high demand for designers from the garment industry which has 850 manufacturing at present. But we cannot increase the intake beyond 50 as our resources are limited." A student exchange programme with India or London is also under consideration for the future. The graduates passing out after a four year study period will have a professional qualification in design after a further few years of employment, although the nitty-gritties of the qualifying process are yet to be worked out. "All of them need not be fashion designers but can be employed in proto type development, retail and other areas requiring design approach," concludes Dr. De Silva. |
|
News | Business | Features
| Editorial | Security Produced by Lake House |
Fashion education should aim at training creative minds that will
manage to stick to the reality of the world, comments Picogna.
"Fashion is not about glory and catwalk but mainly hardwork and lots
of studying. Designing in our modern society is not any more about being
an artist. It is mainly a billion dollar business equal to any other
trade, engineering, law, accounting and it is necessary to understand
marketing, production and social behaviour, good taste, artistic
development and aesthetics. Only a person with such a background will
survive in the international world of the designers."
This January, the National Institute of Education (NIE), Maharagama,
introduced Design and Technology as a subject to grades 10-11 in a pilot
project of 30 schools. This move is yet another step in the national
recognition of a much required need to establish the design component in
the local school curriculum, in order to develop a student's capabilities
to be an efficient problem solver.
