Fashion Industry – Perspective of RICA
Fashion is a word that brings about million visions our minds. Visions that are not only limited to the glamorous shows on Fashion TV but those of tailors who work in the neighborhood.
The word, ‘fashion’ is a generic term as it not only include clothes but everything else that can be worn or carried such as jewellery, belt, bag, hat, scarf and so on. This multibillion industry is gaining momentum with each passing day, leaving behind different notions in the minds of people.
Fashion is much more than the common perception:
Fashion is a business and requires specialists to design, fabricate and market clothes. The fashion world is much bigger than we perceive. It has a wide ranging career options spanning from weaving, dyeing, designing, research, photography, make-up to fashion editorial and journalism. Not only this, the industry has earned fashion bloggers and fashion video developers with the advent of digitization. This contribution of this industry is approximately 5 % to the nation ‘s gross domestic product (GDP). Furthermore, due to the uniqueness of Indian culture, our nation ‘s textile industry is considered to be a unique sector as compared to the other countries and as such it also contributes towards the nation ‘s export.
Non-Traditional career option in the industry:
Fashion is a field which is related to all disciplines of life. For example, to be able to design period garments for a serial or film one has to know the political, social and cultural history of the plot. Likewise for designing and fabricating sports garment, the designer has to determine the functionality of the fabric and has to design it so that performance of the player does not hinder but improves depending on its ergonomic consideration. The demand and supply of the industry keeps on changing with the pace of time and so do the designs. Each garment has its specific requirement. The design of the garment is dependent upon both the comfort and the safety of the wearer. For example, design of uniforms for corporate offices, schools will be different from the design of uniforms for people working at the gas station or even people working in restaurants.
The role of RICA in preparing students for the industry:
The industry is in dire need of professionals with innovative minds and a problem solving attitude. As a result of which a lot of emphasis is put on skill based education. To bridge this skill gap! RICA which once only offered short term courses and diplomas in the field now offers graduate courses in fashion designing. RICA’s distant learning program in fashion designing, fashion merchandising & marketing will kick start soon for aspiring post graduate students.
