Interview with Vandana Narang

Vandana Narang
Campus Director
NIFT Delhi

NIFT made all the difference

The National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) is India’s premier institute imparting fashion education. Set up in 1986 under the aegis of the ministry of textiles, NIFT is an institution of design, management and technology for the fashion business. With its head office in New Delhi, NIFT has centres at Mumbai, Kolkata, Kangra, Gandhinagar, Hyderabad, Chennai, Bengaluru, Raebareli, Patna, Shillong, Bhopal, Kannur, Bhubaneswar, Srinagar and Jodhpur. NIFT was granted statutory status in 2006, empowering it to award degrees and other academic distinctions. In this interview with Richa Bansal, NIFT Delhi Campus Director Dr. Vandana Narang shares her opinions and impressions about fashion education.

Do you think the fashion education system in India is able to meet industry requirements both in terms of quality and quantity? For an industry that is ever growing, quality fashion institutes need to be established (barring NIFT, of course).

We at the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) are definitely able to meet the requirements of the industry; rather, we have set the bars and benchmarks for the fashion industry. I will give you an example of how we have done this. In 2000, when we were talking of the post-quota system, going back in history, we were talking about the opportunity of being there or not. The industry said, "Oh! Everyone will be coming to India, there won't be any quota." There was one gentleman I remember who said that design will be the engine that will pull the industry, and we will be able to pull people to India if we are able to design. This has come true. Because, even during the recession of 2009-2010, when people were not hiring, design students were being picked up (from NIFT) and hired. A gentleman from Japan came from Wear, a social networking site for fashion, and said, "We zeroed in on to you people because we realised that more than 70 per cent of the trained human resources at the managerial level (in India) is from NIFT." Most of these people have come after checking the credentials of the institute. Hence I would say, yes we are able to meet the requirement. But as you asked that since the industry is ever-growing, are we providing quality education in everything? No, I don't think so.

Which are the streams that are lagging behind?

Everywhere in India, there is a negative attitude-that if we are a private institute we only need to follow benchmarks established by the University Grants Commission (UGC) or All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE). There are a few private players that have set up universities, ones which are global in thinking, like Shiv Nadar and Asoka. People are already talking about them in the education sector. An Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) and a regional engineering college cannot be in competition with each other. Similarly, NIFT and any other fashion institute cannot compete with each other. What NIFT and the National Institute of Design (NID) are doing for fashion and design education is totally different. We started from the right ethos, which we have developed. There are several other institutes that have been opened (with the government) in the field of fashion and craft, but they are yet to reach a level like us. Where NIFT and NID have made a difference is that we have taken industry along with us. The industry not only recognises this fact, but accepts it also.

Among students, fashion design and fashion communication are popular streams. What does the industry have to say about it? Is this causing a shortfall in other areas of the fashion industry?

Fashion design and fashion communication are filling two major areas of the industry. Other courses are material-specific. Textile design is doing very well. Textile designers are doing very well too. On the other hand, the leather industry is not so huge, so we have fewer numbers there. But we are doing a very good job in providing quality education. The Footwear Design & Development Institute (FDDI) started with a footwear specialisation, but what NIFT is providing is fashion in leather education. Accessories design students are doing pretty well-be it jewellery, lifestyle products, table-tops-they are all doing brilliantly. Then comes knitwear. Knitwear again is a material-specific course and is coming up in a big way. But yes, students prefer design and communication; there is no dearth of human resources. NIFT keeps these things in mind, and we evolve the number of seats. Our total number of seats is 3,000+ for Bachelor's in design. We have a master's course in fashion retail management -we have it in 13 campuses and each class has 35 students.

Tell me, when we talk of design, where does design fall in the hierarchy of a fashion organisation?

At the top!

Was it so, always?

When we started, it was the other way around-this I am talking of 35 years back. At that time, those were all family managed or operated businesses. The father or the husband was managing the entire business, the wife was designing, and the children or the brotherin-law would be marketing. It was thought that anyone can be a designer-people thought I will take this colour, this fabric, and that trim, and it would be design. But that's not design. That is where NIFT made all the difference. We have changed the mom-and-pop culture to a professionally-managed system. A lot of senior designers have taken over as chief executives of companies. Like ITC, for instance, may ideally be managed by a marketing person, but it is headed by a NIFT graduate from knitwear design [Sartaj Singh Mehta is the creative head of the Lifestyle Retailing Business Division of ITC Limited]. Karunesh Vohra is creative director (Louis Philippe) at Madura Fashion & Lifestyle. Reliance is getting a lot of international brands to India like Italian designer Renzo Rosso and Muji, for instance. Renzo Rosso himself came to NIFT. We had a chat with him on a day when the T-20 World Cup semi-final match between India and West Indies was being played, and on such an evening, we had an amphitheatre full of students! Rosso was in conversation with Suket Dhir, an alumnus of NIFT. He was trying to gauge what Indian designers think. He had come for a purpose, and what he told the students was that hard work and vision can take you anywhere, and he shared his own story. Tommy Hilfiger came to India too, and the only institute he visited was NIFT. We have worked with Ikea for a collection called Svartan, and it is to have a global launch in August. The Madein-India range of products have been designed by students from NIFT Delhi. These are the major associations of the recent past. We will announce more when the time is ripe.

The National Skill Quality Levels (NSQL)-how is NIFT involved with them?

We are part of the board of directors for apparel and man-made. We are working closely with them. They have come up to the certificate level as of now. Since it's a national skilling mission, we are talking numbers here; we are not coming to the managerial level.

What are the skillsets that are going to be focused upon like patternmaking or embroidery or stitching or anything for that matter?

At NSQL, we are looking at developing a lot of skills like pattern-making and embroidery under the ambit of the Apparel Man-Made Sector Skill Council (AMMSSC). They are looking at the entire fashion industry-right from cutting to stitching, finishing, tailoring, ironing, draping, to quality levels. We have covered 46 skills on 1-5 levels, with 5 being the level of a certificate. This doesn't come to NIFT. The Bachelor's degree at NIFT would be Level 7, and Level 8 would be our postgraduate diploma.

The entry of foreign universities has suddenly come under a cloud. How can the foreign universities bridge the gap for human resources in the fashion industry?

If it is for the benefit of the students and benefit of the industry, there is no harm in foreign and private universities coming in. But if they are coming here just to make money and not provide quality education, we need to question it. NIFT first set up a foreign collaboration with Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), but we have not vested on the curriculum which was FIT's curriculum-we have moved forward. We have made a curriculum which is India-specific. We are the only design institute in the country which goes back to the roots, works with the craft sector. UGC does not recognise foreign universities because a lot of standards are questionable. I am not saying Nottingham, Kingston or FIT are questionable. But the UGC has based its parameters on something that it knows best. So, I won't be able to comment on it. If we have a foreign university that has the requisite permissions and sets up a campus here-I think we have enough universities that have set up campuses here. They will do well. But if private institutes are going to ride on the so-called collaborations with foreign universities and say that we are offering better quality education, then UGC is not going to recognise them just like that. For a entry-level job in the industry, no one asks which university did you go to. What they want to know now is what is your quality of work. The problem crops up when people want to go in for a master's or a PhD, because UGC doesn't recognise those courses.

What can be a solution to that?

They will obviously need requisite and proper approvals, since in India only the UGC can approve higher education courses.

With new minister Smriti Irani promoting the new handlooms campaign, as somebody from NIFT, What is it that you are looking forward to from her?

Complete support for the industry, including fashion education. I think we have always had 100 per cent support of the textiles ministry. We are one of the protégées of the textiles ministry. We would want the continuous support of the industry.

The National Design Policy (NDP) of 2007 is still gathering dust, and much of world has changed. Do you think there is a need to re-write the policy?

Of course! Fashion's only constant is change. So, 2007 seems too far away. But the NDP has not taken fashion design into account, it is more about product design and design per se; inclusion of textiles and fashion is very important because India is known for its handlooms and textiles all over the world. We need to promote it much more strongly.

When we talk of handlooms, we talk of promoting the crafts. One sector that is coming up strong in India are the machine-crafted products. So, polyester can give the look, feel or texture of a handloom. Such a product is also cheaper than, say, one made from cotton. How do you manage the tussle between the hand-made and the machine-made?

We have to preserve our heritage, and we have to work towards it. One thing we have to do is product diversification. Let me give you an example-that of the Chamba roomaal (handkerchief), which is exquisite and looks identical from both back and front. Who on earth can afford to have a piece as exquisite as this-one that were used as offerings at temples? I have seen beautiful screen guards as room dividers. That is definitely product diversification. A paithani is going to cost you a few lakhs. You could maybe make a fewer number of paithani, but you can also make dupattas and scarves. Such things are happening, and lots of designers are working with such subjects. Raw Mango is one classic example. Sanjay Garg started with chanderis, but now he is doing an entire apparel line. There are many like him. There are people who started with apparel but moved on to textiles. Rajesh Pratap Singh has developed an entire range of khadi indigo denim. In other words, there are fashion designers going into textiles, and textile designers coming into apparel. So, that amalgamation is already happening. And I am talking of only two designers here. Then there are Suket Dhir and Rahul Mishra. These people are working with something, and reviving (certain arts). An initiative that the government is seriously considering is creating a partnership between design and craft. It's a formal arrangement that we might be doing very shortly. A designer will work with a cluster of craftsmen and come up with a collection, and both will take credit for it. Aneeth Arora (Pero), Anita Dongre and Rajesh Pratap Singh showed these in their collections. These are amalgamations where the craftspeople also feel a sense of ownership.

On the one hand there is a need for more fashion institutes, on the other there have been far too many NIFTs. Has this diluted matters? How can one maintain a balance?

We wouldn't call it too many... The kind of prestige that one hears about NIFT Delhi is not the same as that of, say, NIFT Dhenkanal... NIFT Delhi started 30 years back, But NIFT Kangra started only in 2009, and NIFT Srinagar is just being launched. Give them time to grow, it would not be fair to compare such pairs. It might be better to compare NIFT Delhi with NIFT Mumbai. Someone might ask why isn't NIFT there among the top 10 fashion institutes in the world. But they began ages back! Give us time to catch up. After all, an institute is judged by its alumni. Perceptions change only over time. I had been a faculty member at NIFT Delhi and am now heading it. So, I shouldn't be the person to comment about why it is apparently so well-known. I can only say that we work very hard. Institutes are not made from buildings and mortar, but faculties.

Is there a dearth of good faculty members across the country?

There is a dearth of faculty across the education sector. IITs have 40 per cent less faculty than what they should have. At the very senior faculty level, NIFT has a shortage of about 20 per cent. You can't just create professors; they develop over time. In the mid-level, we are more or less in place. We do regular recruitments, but on a need basis. We have a systematic way of inducting faculty. We induct faculty who have a certain amount of experience in industry/education, besides qualifications. After that we have orientation programmes where they get to know the institute. Besides that, we have training programmes for trainers. We have very senior people training the trainers. We bring international faculty too for that purpose. Then we invite faculties from all over to participate in those courses. If needed, there is hand-holding too. Over all, when we started, NIFT was the pioneer of fashion education in India. At that time, there was no proper curriculum or hand-holding. When NIFT was launched, the government took the support of Nottingham Trent University as well as FIT New York, with FIT as mentor campus and faculty members from Nottingham were requested to contribute. They started with a very open mind about what fashion education in India should be. All the faculty members at NIFT for the first ten years used to be sent abroad for training, which would range from six months to one year. Later, that was brought down to two months. The support came both from the government of India as well as a project of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). NIFT itself was one of the biggest success stories of UNDP. It all started with that one course (on fashion design) in 1986. Today, we have seven Bachelor's programmes and three Master's programmes. We have had five PhDs in the last two years from NIFT Delhi, and two from outside. Our PhD is extremely rigorous, and there are three examiners, one of them necessarily being an international examiner.

Published on: 09/09/2016

DISCLAIMER: All views and opinions expressed in this column are solely of the interviewee, and they do not reflect in any way the opinion of Fibre2Fashion.com.