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A career in fashion (View Comments)
Unnati Narang
Posted On Monday, February 01, 2010 at 12:19:14 PM
With a sea change in the way fashion and design are now taught and practiced, a career in fashion is quickly becoming the latest fad for the new generation of fashion enthusiasts
Gone are the days when the definition of fashion in India was restricted to women running home- based boutiques, using a handful of fabrics, colours or designs for a limited market. Today, as the Indian consumers are becoming more and more fashion conscious, the fashion world is also gearing up to meet their needs and desires to ‘dress up’. While India has always been known for its wealth of exquisite textiles and fabrics, only in the past few decades has the country made its mark on the global fashion map.
Explaining the evolution of the fashion industry, Sachit Bhatia, senior manager representative (South Asia), Cotton Council International (CCI), a US-based non-profit organisation for increasing consumer awareness and preference for cotton products in India comments, “Until a few years ago we could actually count Indian designers on our fingertips, but this scenario has undergone a drastic change. More and more youngsters are now stepping ahead to take up designing as a career. Indian designers are representing the country at prestigious international fashion shows and have been successful in carving out a prominent space for themselves. With this trend increasingly gathering pace, we predict a huge influx of talent in the field.”
Opportunities galore
With greater sophistication and specialisation, the industry offers many more career options to choose from. In addition to fashion designing, there are exciting opportunities in textile designing, apparel merchandising, fashion styling, visual merchandising and fashion communications. Bhatia elucidates, “In apparel merchandising, it helps to have a strong sense of style and forecasting abilities, in addition to business training and thereafter, one can diversify in management roles or work with major apparel manufacturers or buying offices. As for stylists, trained stylists are required by various styling/design companies as well as TV channels and the film fraternity. Fashion Communication is a new but a very exciting field that has opened up in the fashion industry. It involves working on design strategies, brands, portfolios, etc. It is extremely relevant in today’s scenario of rapid developments in the fashion industry, where many Indian brands are competing with international brands.”
CCI has introduced a first of its kind design based reality show ‘Let’s Design’ in India to give an opportunity to aspiring designers. Priyanka Grover, Best Designer, Let’s Design Season 2, represents one of the many Indian fashion designers in the making. Coming from a very humble background, nobody in Priyanka’s family had thought that she would venture into fashion and designing. Her father, owner of a retail cloth store, wanted her to become an engineer. Yet, her parents supported her firm decision to study fashion at NIFT. Priyanka, who has won herself a CCI sponsored trip to Paris out of a pool of 700 applicants, feels lucky to be in India, “There is ample opportunity for a fashion professional in India. After agriculture, the textiles sector is the next big thing in India. Fashion is an industry which can never die, simply because people would never stop wearing clothes.”
Success speak
What does it take to be a successful fashion professional? Image consultant and fashion stylist, Rishi Raj, speaks from his decades of experience in fashion and styling, “Any fashion professional must be extremely creative. Beyond that, many fashion professionals tend to believe that they are always right. To be successful, they must let go of this attitude and listen to the clients with an open mind. There is no point of creating an outfit or accessory that looks like a piece of art, if your client doesn’t want to wear it. My advice for new entrants in this industry is that hard work alone will get you to your goals. Stay grounded, for it is very easy to get carried away and lose focus in this glamorous industry, which is full of beautiful people and beautiful, deadly things!”
Clearly, there is immense opportunity for passionate, driven and creative people in the fashion world, which pushes you to your limits endlessly and where only the best get to live their dream of creating glamour constantly!
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