The Art of Fashion

Working in close cooperation with American experts, the National Institute of Fashion Technology in New Delhi is preparing men and women for careers in fashion.

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a year ago, had never stitched a seam, group created-designed of Indian youngstersandwho, until have stitched -Western evening wear which, according to their American teacher Eva Bernard Nambath, "can rival the best in the world."

The young Indians are trendsetters in more ways than one. They are the first batch of students in the fashion design course of the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) in New Delhi, which was set up in 1986by the Government of India in collaboration with New York's Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT). Says Nambath, who was at NIFT from August 1987 to May 1988 as a visiting professor from FIT, "These kids can do it. You should have seen how they worked." Proudly displaying the collection of high fashion Western evening wear, she continues, "Each of these garments was put together entirely by the students. From the designing of the pattern through the cutting and stitching, right down to the last seam ...it was all done by them. I have seen designer dresses all over Europe and the United States.

These are as good as the best anywhere."

The creations-which will now be among the first items in the NIFT archives-are indeed admirable. Black wool jersey, rich Indian fabrics in jeweled colors (ruby red, emerald green, sapphire blue) and raw tussar silks have been styled and fashioned into elegant, exquisite dresses that one could well imagine draped on socialites anywhere in the world. Painstaking labor and imagination have gone into the making of each dress under the supervision of teachers from FIT.

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India's first ever institute for the fashion industry, NIFT was set up on the basis of a feasibility report prepared by FIT. As its prospectus states, NIFT aims at preparing "men and women for careers in fashion and its related professions, and to provide leadership, research and other basic services to the apparel/fashion industry."

According to Richard Streiter, FIT's dean who came to India as a senior consultant to NIFT in 1986, the ultimate aim is to help India emerge from being "just a tailor to the world into a major fashion center." In an interview, Streiter said, "India is like a sleeping beauty.

Its resources are not being properly utilized."

The garment export boom that began in the 1960sand still continues, has made this industry the third largest foreign exchange earner for India. Yet India controls only 2.5 percent of the world's garment exports. This is largely because many exporters, in their bid to make a fast buck and meet impossible deadlines, have not made any serious attempts at improving the quality and finish of their products. Another constraint was the shortage of modern equipment and trained people who could compete at the international level. The result is that, despite having a rich variety of textiles and relatively inexpensive labor, India has failed to make it to the big league in the fashion race. Indian and foreign experts feel that what the country needs is a more professional, technical, fashion-oriented and less slapdash approach to garment exports.

Says Nambath candidly, "Indian dresses are often associated with being cheap, badly finished and of poor quality. But all that can change. When I was growing up in the United States soon after World War II, Japanese goods too were synonymous with poor quality. Yet look at what Japan has achieved today. It is nothing short of a complete turnabout, a technological miracle. India too can achieve this in the field of garment exports.

You have the fabrics, the skills, the intelligence, the talent and people with enthusiasm

The

Art of Fashion

by REHANA SEN

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and energy to work. Labor and fabrics are cheaper here than in other countries. You have it made."

NIFT aims at filling in the lacuna that has widened the gap between India's potential and performance by providing technical knowledge and instilling an attitude of professionalism.

Funded by the Government ofIndia, NIFT has a high-profile board of governors with Pupul Jayakar as chairperson and designer Martand Singh as consultant. The board's members include senior officials of the Ministry of Textiles and prominent leaders from the Indian garment industry. Working with FIT experts, they evolved guidelines for NIFT. Temporarily housed at the Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium, NIFT conducts two-year, four-semester diploma courses in fashion design, garment-manufacture technology, and apparel marketing and merchandising. The fashion design course was started in August 1987 and the other two are being inaugurated this month. There are also shorter courses in subjects like fashion presentation, production techniques and the basics of starting a small business. The fee for each diploma course is Rs. 1,500 per semester; for the shorter courses it is between Rs. 500 and Rs. 6,000, depending on the course and its duration. There is a hostel for students from out of town.

NIFT has a renewable four-year agreement with FIT, which has "been working out very successfully," says NIFT Executive Director Rathi Vinay Jha, a former official of the Tamil Nadu Weavers' Cooperative Society (Cooptex) and the Ministry of Commerce.

FIT's input includes sending some of its faculty members to Delhi, training the Indian faculty at New York, and supplying equipment, books, periodicals, catalogs and accessones.

Says Theresa Reilly of FIT, who was a visiting professor at NIFT earlier this year, "When I developed the course on the history of fashion for New York's Fashion Institute

of Technology more than 15 years ago, I never dreamed that it would bring me to India. I have thoroughly enjoyed teaching the history of fashion to the Indian students at NIFT. Two Indian faculty members will now be coming to New York to study under me so that they can teach this course from the next semester. " NIFT's faculty comprises 11 Indian teachers trained at FIT and visiting American professors from FIT, most of whom stay for an entire semester.

NIFT's Jha hopes that in coming years the institute will also have professors from fashion schools in Europe to teach at NIFT. "This will help our students to understand the fashion requirements of Europe as well and ensure a bigger market and output for India's garment exports," Jha says.

Though NIFT earlier insisted on two years of art or fashion-related education or experience for students applying for the fashion design course, '\~Te've changed that now," says Jha. "We realize that there are hardly any opportunities for people to have got such education or experience. So now we take students who have a school certificate (ten plus two) and who seem to have a creative aptitude. We give them a written test and follow that up with an interview.

"Of course, we can make mistakes and take the wrong person, but we try to select people

who are interested in related careers, not those who just want to do this as a hobby-not someone who will just say, 'Oh, I've been interested in fashion since I was four.'''

The current fashion design course has 18 girls and seven boys. Nambath helped the students practice whatever they learned in theory, guiding them through the production of two collections of finished garments. From August to Christmas they worked on daytime dresses, using Ikat designs and fabrics, Jaipur block printing and "all the unbelievably cool cotton that India produces." The students learned how to make sportswear, office wear and clothes for children. The next semester, which ended in May, concentrated on evening wear. Nambath was delighted with the students' enthusiasm and the way they learned to improvise ("using doctors' tongue depressors instead of whale bone for stays"). She says,' "I would tell them, 'When you find yourself in front of a wall, always find a way around it,' and they did that, overcoming so many obstacles. They worked through weekends and late into the nights."

Nambath also stressed the importance of excellent finishing. "It is essential that the finish of the garment is near-perfect. Faulty and imperfect touches can ruin the best of fabrics and designs," she says. "I spent six hours every week drilling the students in sewing techniques. We worked on interfacing to give body to a garment, pressing it lightly to allow the fabric to 'live,' using the right buttons and the right finishing touches. Seams, About the Author: Rehana Sen is afree-lance living in Delhi.

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Theresa Reilly from the New York Fashion Institute of Technology taught a course in the history of fashion at NIFT earlier this year.

hems, loops must all be perfectly done. All this requires patience, commitment and strict discipline. You can see the results in our collection. I am proud to have been associated with the students who have created these dresses."

Nambath's husband is from Kerala, and though they live in New York, she visits India often enough and for long spells, to have become familiar with the fabrics here and gauge their potential in the international fashion market. Her association with NIFT has also given her an idea of the potential of the young designers. She talks of a student who "was adamant that she would create a Yves Saint Laurent dress that she had seen in a catalog of his summer collection. She just would not be discouraged by the nonavailability of the right fabric and several small items that go into the making of a couturier creation. She plodded on, improvising where necessary, working all night-and, finally, she did produce a near-perfect replica."

While fashion may be all about chasing dreams, creating it is hard work. The students soon learn that theory and practice are equally important. Theresa Reilly's lectures on the history of fashion didn't just give students fascinating glimpses into what was fashionable yesterday, but also helped them understand fashion.

Explains Reilly, "This is an interdisciplinary course, combining art history, applied art, history, anthropology, sociology and ethnology. I have designed it to impart all this information in a vibrant, exciting manner, linking one discipline with the other. I make the lectures relevant to today's lifestyle."

Reilly's course begins with prehistory and ends with the 20th century. "In some 14 lectures, thousands of years of Western history are covered," she says. "Every week I show them 50 to 150 slides relating to art, fashion, costume and history. After the lecture there is a lab session where the students create fashion designs based on the period of history being studied. I show photographs of current fashions which have been adapted from 14th-century styles or techniques. I stress that nothing in fashion is new. Adaptation is the key word. Tomorrow's designers will adapt what has been done today. The students also have to understand that, above all, fashion is a matter of culture and what is

SPAN AUGUST

1988

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"I now realize that fashion is not something new. The same ingredients have always been prayed with to give a new look."

"I am fascinated by the history of garments.

In designing Western costumes for today, I use ideas from old Indian and Western costumes."

"I have learnt to apply the concrete past not only to make a creative present, but also the unpredictable future--in fashion and in everyday life."

Sangita Ohri

Sham ala Vallury

Rekha Bhatt

Nightgown. classical Greek style.

Nightgown,

Raincoat, inspired by ecclesiastical clothing .

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classical Greek style.

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ART OF FASHION continued

fashionable in one culture may not be fashionable in another. ':1 stress the threads between cultures and how the past influences the present. One cannot teach design without explaining the construction of the garment and how each civilization modified it to suit itself."

As an example, Reilly shows an illustration of a child's trousers made in China in 1983.

"Children are usually made to wear red in China since it is considered an auspicious color to ward off evil spirits," she explains.

The trousers have five applique designs, "representing five poisons-a toad, a centipede, a snake, a salamander and a scorpionwhich, when used together, are supposed to serve as an amulet for the child's.well-being."

Reilly doesn't stop at discussing clothes: "I also tell my students about accessories, hairstyles, head coverings, jewelry and cosmetics in different civilizations and periods."

The students supplement their lectures with reference work in NIFT's impressive library of books anct magazines.

Coming to modern times, Reilly tells her students about the creations of Charles FredEva Bernard Nambath (extreme left), a visiting professor from the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, explains the finer points offashion designing to students at NIFT.

erick Worth, Jeanne Lanvin, Paul Poiret, Christian Dior and other contemporary designers. NIFT also has more than 200 videotapes on international fashion shows and related themes.

Though the NIFT students have so far concentrated on Western fashions-the idea, after all, is to boost garment exports-there are also classes on Indian costuming. "Some students will, after all, join firms that only cater to the Indian market," says Jha. During their summer vacations, the students are placed in garment manufacturing units in or near their hometowns as trainees. "This is essential if they are to have a realistic idea of what the fashion industry is like and how it functions," says Jha. "At NIFT they are sheltered and have no idea of what a tough world the garment industry is. This exposure should prepare them for what lies ahead."

And what lies ahead for NIFT? "We are working hard toward becoming a premier institution," says Jha. "We need more space, more courses ....We also want to expand the present course by a year so that we can make it a full-fledged degree course.

"Someday perhaps we can hope to be not only a fashion training institute, but a center for fashion education in South Asia. That is the direction in which we are heading and that is the goal on which we have set our sights." D "I now see history in terms of garments, not wars! A Greek costume can give me ideas for a nightgown, an evening gown or a swimsuit."

"I am fascinated by the exaggerated fashions of the past. Influenced by them I think futuristically first and then tone down my designs."

"The history of fashion has lots to offer as inspiration, especially by way of intricate embroidery, patterns and color combinations."

Nandita Dassapa

Sujit Mukherjee

Anshu Sabharwal

Velvet dress, medieval style .

Velvet and net dress, medieval style.

Velvet and net dress, medieval style.

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