With the changing dynamics of Indian fashion and retail industry and growing impact of social media, most of the fashion or design colleges have now understood that to make their students a successful professional, industry involvement at every step is unavoidable. And it is interesting to see that not only autonomous institutes like NIFT, but private universities too are working towards this.
IILM University, Gurugram, a private university organized an industry interaction for its admission seekers during DAT (Desing Aptitude Test) recently. Darshana Srivastava, Head-Visual Merchandising, Gap India, Arvind Lifestyle Brands Limited, addressed the admission seekers on possible growth opportunities in the world of design & fashion.
The university offers various UG and PG design and management degree courses.
IILM has strong industry linkages with reputed design & fashion companies like the Aditya Birla Group, Arvind Brands, Bata India Ltd, Future Group, Ritu Kumar and Shoppers’ Stop etc. Apart from this, it has tie-ups with more than 40 international institutes and universities in Australia, Canada, European countries, USA etc.
Dr. Sujata Shahi, Vice Chancellor, IILM University shares, “At IILM, currently, every month, one industry interaction session in various means is must and the university is further planning to increase it as per requirement. Concept of liberal education at the university allows student to learn, study anything along with their core course or degree. A student of fashion or design do have the opportunity of study management or psychology”.
The entire exercise is to bring out the student’s creativity at its best like in 2 hours exercise as part of DAT, the applicants prepared different products, based on the personality traits given to them. The activity led to some extraordinary designs, which were highly appreciated by the jury members.
Not only industry interaction or DAT, most of the exercises at the various processes even before courses, is to support aspirants. Like in the interview process, as part of which the applicants interact with the panel members on various aspects like their educational background, communication skills, personality, confidence levels, future plans etc. They are counselled about the most appropriate programme to opt for. Parents are happy with the entire process and support such initiatives by IILM.
