Fashion education in India

EDUCATION is power. It is enlightenment, a cornucopia and an elixir. It is everything, but is it fashion?
   To most of us the only similarity, perhaps, between fashion and education is that both are extremely important part of our lives. Fashion is your personal style statement. It is present in every aspect of our lifestyle - garments, home furnishings, personal and interior accessories. However, what most of us don't realise is that for any fashion to emerge, exhaustive research, analysis and experimentation is required.
   "Fashion is not just about walking the ramp. It is actually a consummate integration of design, technology, management and communication," informs Kautilya Dagaonkar, a student of National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT). Major institutes offering fashion education in India include the Inter National Institute of Fashion Design (INIFD), Pearl academy of fashion and NIFT.
   Apart from the well-known designing courses in fashion, textiles, knitwear, leather and accessory design, NIFT also offers a course in fashion technology that trains students in core garment manufacturing technology. Suhail Anwar, course coordinator, states: "Besides apparel production, the knowledge of information technology is also imparted which prepares students to someday become the agents of change in the industry".
Further, Shilpa Toshn-iwal, pursuing a two years' advanced diploma in textile designing at INIFD, feels that the course is very appropriately designed and covers all the requisites for creating a textile designer in just two years.
Apart from various undergraduate programmes, Pearl Academy of Fashion offers postgraduate courses in fashion marketing, fashion merchandising and fashion retail. To gauge the changing requirements in this global business of fashion, a formal education is apparently necessary. There is immense scope for penetration in this field, as one can explore and experiment. Besides, there's always the chance to make a global mark.