Lynne Murray, director of the Digital Anthropology Lab at the London College of Fashion, has underlined the need to understand the impact of digitisation on the fashion industry. With business models shifting to faster production techniques, students must keep up with technological advances to meet the growing consumer demand.
Students pursuing Fashion Design deal with various dimensions of Art, Science, and Technology and can explore a variety of career opportunities. The urgent need is to expose them to all these segments and the evolution in terms of technology, behavioural patterns, current trends, and more. This will enable them to identify and create products according to the requirements.
There are two undergraduate programmes open to students in fashion. The Bachelor’s in Design deals with designing fashion accessories, apparel, stitching, styling and creating a dress, whereas, the four-year Bachelor’s in Fashion Technology is a mix of creativity and technology that combines fashion trends with various production techniques.
From designing and production to sales and marketing, the inclusion of technology is reshaping how we perceive fashion. This includes changing runways to retail cycles and strengthening e-commerce offerings and promotions on social media platforms, in order to track and evaluate customer preferences and behaviour.
Computer-Aided Design (CAD)
Today, students, especially those pursuing B.FTech need to master Computer Aided Design (CAD). It teaches them to compare traditional fabrics, their fibre and trimmings, and consider a variety of designing techniques in a short time. Chances of error are greatly minimised or even removed. It reduces the requirement of manual sketching, flat drawing, pattern making, manual marker planning and other related tasks and increases output, thus allowing students to deal with multiple colour variations and intricate collection development.
Impact of social media
Another aspect students need to understand is how the world views fashion today and the impact of social media influencers on consumer choices. Colleges need to increase interaction with technology for students to shape their designs so that they are customer-centric. Familiarity with 3D printing and universal design software is essential. Students also need to know about the latest digital printing technology and global trends in the field. While traditional screen printing cannot be left out, they also have to know all about facilities such as digital dyeing rooms and digital vats.
Fashion students require skills such as drawing techniques, understanding fabrics, understanding body structures, measurements, colours, patterns and inspirations for collections. Adding technological skills will add an extra dimension to this and colleges need to bridge the gap by establishing innovation labs to keep students up to date.
The writer is Director, JD Institute of Fashion Technology.
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