It takes two to tango

National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) as the

premier fashion institute of nation has always been setting international

benchmarks in teaching Indian fashion education. Continuing with the trend and

taking 'Change' as the ruling word, it has taken a step forward by adopting

information technology in all its areas of application.

It has recently tied up with Indira Gandhi National Open

University (IGNOU), exclusively for its Bachelor of Computer Applications (BCA)

program and has thus enhanced its already existing concept of Fashion Designing

and Information Technology (FDIT) course.

The course curriculum is a blend of subjects, both by

IGNOU as well as NIFT. Any student, who enrolls with IGNOU for a regular BCA

course, can also appear for an entrance exam in NIFT for the FDIT course. The

course is entitled to a docket designed to develop professionals in the areas of

fashion, along with knowledge discipline. The semester wise syllabus for BCA

will also be covered along with the fashion and IT inputs during the study at

NIFT. This thus entitles the apprentices to acquire a Diploma in Fashion and IT

from NIFT and a BCA degree from IGNOU.

The course is very much Mathematics specific, making it

tough for students who opt for Humanities in the secondary level, for choosing

Fashion Designing as a career option after completing Intermediate. This has but

helped in making the admission process more streamlined and organized and assure

the quality part, which it was lacking for the past two years. The course has a

limitation of 60 seats.

Some of the subjects covered are--Elements of Design,

Surface Ornamentation, Fashion Art and Illustration, History of Indian/western

costumes, Pattern-making, Draping, Grading and Marker-making, Garment

Construction, Fabric Science, Marketing and Merchandizing, Quality Control,

Fashion Forecasting etc. These also encompass diploma projects, industry

training, craft documentation and a graduation fashion show.

The course is scheduled under the Department of

Information Technology (DIT) at NIFT, which was formed in 1996, as an awareness

towards the criticality of revolution unleashed by IT all over the world, in all

areas of business. The mission of the department is to bridge the gap between

the fashion industry and IT.

Defining the buzzword Fashion, Shilpa Gulatee, Project

Coordinator, DIT, NIFT said, "FDIT is a combination of fashion and

technology. Fashion by definition is a philosophy of design and is zodiacally

applicable. We at DIT believe in rendering not just plain fashion, but

inculcating that basic sense of creativity and designing in our students.

Fashion thus can be applied in all areas of workmanship like Web designing,

photography, interior designing, apparel and list is endless. And we, aim at

exploiting that to maximum."

The course aims at blending (or rather embedding) IT so

well with fashions that student finally turns out to be pliable in all the

aspects. A single person thus becomes capable of handling a complete project at

one go. Initiating from thinking a concept, writing the script, fabricating the

idea out. Then to getting it to the market, handling the brand promotion,

attuning the cost part and finally sales promotion, all can be easily handled by

a single person. It's actually a whole discipline that is taught and a whole

management that is explained.

The computer fundamentals covered in the curriculum

are--MS Office, Corel Draw, Adobe PhotoShop, Adobe PageMaker, Metacreation

Painter and Poser, Fashion Studio, Macromedia Director, PC software application

skills, foundation course in Mathematics, C programming and data structures,

2D/3D animations, apparel CAD, textile CAD, introduction to system software,

elements of system analysis and design, introduction to DBMS, Windows

programming, multimedia, photography and digital imaging, computer networking,

TCP/IP programming, introduction to software engineering, intranet

administration, Web design, etc.

Currently, it accommodates 800 students on four floors,

with a separate campus in making. Since its inception, department has given 400,

completely tractable and adaptable students to the industry. The department has

no arrangements for in-house placements, inspite of which all the students are

well placed and settled.

The institute aims at rendering not only fashion

designers, but transforming them to complete professionals, who are suited for

any industry, ranging from advertising to WAP solutions to news, ISPs or even a

place like Channel V. It has distinguished experts dropping in for projects,

which are integrally cost effective and creative. It does not encourage students

to make clothes or prepare designs, which really do not work or are not

wearable.

NIFT has set up a campus-wide fiber of 100 MBPS switched

network backbone that connects all the departments. A total number of 463 nodes

communicate seamlessly over the network. With the installation of network

management systems, all the network resources are managed effectively and

optimally from any point in the network. The network is designed modularly and

there are plans to augment the network capacity to more than 600 nodes. NIFT is

an authorized training center for Autodesk, Corel, Info-Design of France,

Bentley Corporation of USA, and Lectra of France.

Department labs are well equipped with state-of-the-art

hardware including high-end graphic workstations, plotters, digitizers, image

scanners, wide format printers, edit VCRs, sound mixers, digital production

management, market research and merchandising all of which are being updated on

a continuous basis.

All the departments have access to Internet connection

through a dedicated leased line of 128 KBPS. Efforts are underway to network all

NIFT centers through a Wide Area Network. In the near future, NIFT has ambitious

plans to unleash the benefits of latest IT technologies. A videoconferencing

studio center is also being lined up at the campus.