Designer Industry: Challenges And Opportunities Coexist

According to the world clothing and shoe net, there are 1500 graduates in the past 4 days.

The series appears on the T stage of Graduate Fashion Week (GFW).

The annual activities of students gathered in 68 fashion colleges around the world can be described as a popular campus recruitment meeting.

In the multi storey warehouse space where the venue is held, these graduate series have changed their new look, and every corner of the three exhibition halls has been filled.

The graduates are warmly waiting with their works, and patiently expect to catch the eyes of the ordinary people in the industry, the media, and around the place.

The graduate fashion week, founded in 1991, started with a clear goal: "we have gathered students from all kinds of universities in all parts of the United Kingdom, as well as potential employers from all over Europe and the United States," recalls Jeff Banks.

This method is very simple.

As the forerunner and the largest activity of such activities, the commonweal institution is now the world's largest.

The leader's platform for promoting student employment connects thousands of international fashion graduates with potential employers.

Polly Thomas, a fashion specialist at Edinburgh College of Art in Edinburgh, thinks GFW is an opportunity to create career connections only once in a lifetime, and says: "whether it's resume writing or collection of works.

It is sure that we can get suggestions from the industry. "

The activity has expanded rapidly over the past 5 years, including the Bunka Fashion Graduate University of the Tokyo Academy of cultural studies, the Royal University of science and Technology (RMIT) of Melbourne, and the New York Pratt school (Pratt Institute). Now it has joined the international fashion show competition (International Catwalk Competition, referred to as ICC) under the Graduation Fashion week.

Adrien Yakimov Roberts, international director and ICC planner of Graduation Fashion Week, said, "when we first started, there were only 4 schools, and 32 schools came in this year."

The best proof of the "open source" and the training of high potential talents from the public welfare organization is from the influential people of the event.

So far, the public welfare organization has helped promote the career of Burberry Christopher Bailey, Stella McCartney and Stachart Vevers, the winner of the Graduate Fashion Award in 1991. Now the role of Coach is being hired immediately after graduation series.

But since the founding of the fashion week, the fashion industry has changed.

Graduates entering this industry are now facing more intense competition, changing talent demand and rapidly changing technology - challenges and opportunities coexist.

Challenges continue to evolve.

"More than 6 years ago, our focus was mainly on" educators and educators, "said Martyn Roberts, general manager of fashion fashion week." although they are very academically successful, some people do not know how to establish channels of communication, and how to recommend their best graduates with potential employers in the most effective way. "

Roberts said that by connecting the industry leaders and universities, the Graduation Fashion Week promoted employers to shape fashion students according to their needs: "we have more interested brands here to see the students' collections in advance and understand what they are doing.

In this way, they can first explore talents and provide development proposals for them.

At present, technology and production are also emphasized.

That is the field of industry.

In recent years, the focus of Graduation Fashion Week has been shifted to attracting potential employers. "The more industry we meet, the more opportunities we have to cooperate," Roberts said. "The biggest challenge is to let them push the door open.

As long as they understand what they see, they will be excited and will invest more, "he continued." last year's activities, ASOS's activities were few, "he said." then they suddenly realized that there were a lot of talents here, and they created two new awards, namely, design and communication. "

ASOS is no longer "standing by the sidelines". Instead, it is joining more and more business parties such as Calvin Klein and Inditex group, and actively participates in this activity for campus recruitment.

Despite its success, to keep pace with the growth of the number of graduates entering the job market every year, Graduation Fashion Week is still faced with arduous tasks.

"The competition for jobs in the fashion industry is fierce," says Mal Burkinshaw, director of the Edinburgh Arts Institute. "Unfortunately, there are no more macro considerations for all kinds of projects, that is, the limitations of the occupation market itself, and the recruitment of too many students."

Digital opportunity

Graduation Fashion Week has not yet begun to explore ways to digitize collections, but this may be the key to solving the geographical barriers between graduates and potential employers.

"No one wants to edit hundreds of pages of pages by page," he said, but Dean Sidaway, assistant professor of the Platt Institute, said, "but the well written, focused works and visual stories will bring real interaction experience to the industry."

At present, a few colleges and universities have adopted digital editions, such as graduate school of culture and Clothing Institute.

"We provide digital magazines to show and support students' design and allow them to use digitalization," says Kyoko Kubodera, assistant professor. "We can then demonstrate to a wider audience, not limited to physical exhibitions, to provide a wider range of online platforms." Arakawa Kyoko said.

Due to the current funding constraints, Graduation Fashion Week is difficult to integrate and archive collections, Roberts admits. "This will be a fairly large project and requires considerable investment," he said. "But this is something we are interested in doing, especially with our partners."

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The importance of strengthening and popularizing the digital platform that can further connect graduates and industries is self-evident.

Elinor Renfrew, head of fashion University at Kingston University, said strong personal brand and social media performance are crucial to the current employment of students.

"It may not necessarily be the most talented one," she said. "But the student with the most social media and digital skills can find a job because they are already in the market."

Allowing students to upload images of their works to accessible, carefully edited and trusted databases can create a more global environment for graduate recruitment.

Let industry participate.

The main attraction of graduate fashion week to the recruiters is to gather a large number of students in the same place in the city center.

"The reason for Graduation Fashion Week is that Calvin Klein recruiters are not able to visit 36 different universities in the UK," Roberts said. "But they will be willing to go to a central location and see as many students as possible."

But despite the strong presence of Inditex, ASOS, Boohoo, M&S and other commercial brands in the fashion week of graduates, graduates fashion week is still trying to attract the London Central Saint Martin Institute of Arts (Central St Martins) and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (Royal College of Art) graduate design exhibition to attract luxury fashion houses to recruit.

"It's hard to reach a higher level of recruitment," Thomas said. "If there are really top designers coming, we can't know how many people they really recruit.

If it does, everything will be very low-key. "

But with the participation of Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein and other brands, this is slowly changing.

To be exact, Graduation Fashion Week is strengthening its attraction to the brand side by cater to the new needs of the fashion industry in the future.

Banks said, "we are currently communicating in digital marketing, photography and media communication.

Graduate Fashion Week is spreading to more channels. "

We are creating graduate fashion week as an activity that can attract international employers and recruiters to graduates.

Upgrading the Graduation Fashion week to the platform of recruiting talents in fashion design, digital marketing and communication will expand the scope of attraction for the industry.

But Alison Welsh, chairman of the fashion week's Executive Committee and director of the Manchester Fashion Institute in Manchester, says there's still more work to do: "at the moment, technology and production will also be emphasized."

In the field of industry, we need to ensure that students of these professions can enjoy a platform as well.

"Of course, in the final analysis, it's all about capital constraints," she added. "With sufficient funds, we can start to show more aspects of the industry, technology, production and communication, in the fashion week of graduates."

The excellent gathering place of global talents

International expansion is another way for Graduation Fashion week to explore. It is easy to link students and industries globally.

Roberts said: "we believe that fashion and fashion professionals are quite internationalized."

Welsh agrees: "the more internationalized we are, the wider the external orientation.

Such expansion can create a win-win situation for students and the industry.

Banks explains that locating London as an excellent place for graduate market is the responsibility of the graduate fashion week since its founding, so that students from all over the world can have a central focus and benchmark, "explains Banks." we are creating graduates' fashion week as an activity that can attract international employers and recruiters to graduates.

With the addition of 10 new foreign universities this year, the Graduation Fashion Week has been incorporated into young and mature organizations at the same time.

Yakimov Roberts believes: "to win more authoritative institutions in the industry, such as FIT in New York, also means that other institutions that have not yet joined are hard to refuse to join."

Like the US and China, there is still room for expansion.

At present, the two countries have first born display of graduates, but they have failed to reach the scale and reputation of the graduation week.

But to make Graduation Fashion Week truly "international", the current form needs to be renovated, because with more schools joining, there is no doubt that it needs more space and exposure than at present.

For now, the international fashion show competition is one of the major opportunities that can help students to impress others.

Sidaway said, "I hope that there will be international space in the exhibition space to support graduates and show them their collections."

Yakimov Roberts agrees: "the collection is a way for students to get jobs, so they will work hard to show their collections and ways of work."

Graduation Fashion Week must seek sponsors and partnerships to expand activities and develop international marketing to attract new institutions to join.

It is commendable that despite the funding constraints, the fashion week of graduation has also taken a bold look at adopting a more globalized way of thinking.

"We want to help every student, but we are just a public welfare institution with limited resources," Roberts said. "But this does not prevent us from providing help to students as much as possible."

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