Fashion designing and technology has picked up very fast in India with the help of institutes like NIFT in the last couple of decades. What we witness when models showcase on the ramp or eminent fashion designers provide media interviews is the glamour quotient. However, the glamour and glitz comes at the end of very hard work, intense creative application and constant passion of designers and creative minds.OPUS provides a gateway to all future aspirants to the world of fashion, design and creativity.
NIFT – Beginning of organised fashion foray in India
When it comes to fashion, the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) has been the alma mater to a large number of flag bearers like Sabyasachi Mukherjee, Rina Dhaka, Manish Arora, to name a few. OPUS has been at the forefront of preparing aspirants for the world of fashion design and technology as they get ready to take entrance exams for NIFT. The National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) was set up in 1986 in collaboration with the Fashion Institute, New York, with the objective to deliver high quality training to aspirants in the aesthetics and technology of fashion and textile. Starting from a small set-up in New Delhi, NIFT has now expanded to 16 centres across India, with the latest one being opened in Srinagar. Every year, NIFT takes in more than 2,700 students, both national and international.
Where to go to in pursuit of your design dream
NIFT currently provides a four-year Bachelors’ programme, a two-year Masters course and PH.D programmes. Admissions to the graduate and post-graduate programmes are through All-India entrance examinations. With OPUS’ training, you will be prepared to crack the entrance exams to these institutes. While OPUS mainly prepares for NIFT, the training will help you get into other fashion and design institutes as well.
When it comes to the universe of design in India, National Institute of Design (NID) is the mecca for students. A premier government set-up, NID now has a campus in Bangalore branching from its Gujarat campuses – in Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar.
Today, the field of design is no longer just about fashion in clothing and apparel. Design has become an expanded field offering courses from car design to event design to ceramic to game design & game art and glass design. With the government making skill India a priority, the scope for creative design minds to expand into promising careers is a lot.
While NIFT and NID are government bodies, there are several other pre-eminent private institutes which produce promising designers. Let us take a look at the institutes:
- Pearl Academy, New Delhi
- Shristi Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore
- Indian Institute of Design and Innovation, Mumbai
- MIT Institute of Design, Pune
- Unitedworld Institute of Design, Ahmedabad
| Institute | Course name | Duration | Fees (INR) | Placements |
| NIFT, New Delhi | Bachelors in Fashion Design | 4 years | ~1,00,000 per semester | ~85% campus placement in 2016 |
| NID, Ahmedabad | Bachelorsin Design | 4 years | ~1,50,000 per semester | Selected students get ~48 lakh/year pay package and upward |
| Pearl Academy of Fashion | Diploma in Fashion Design | 4 years | ~2,60,000 per semester | ~95% placement year-on-year |
| MIT Institute of Design, Pune | Bachelors in Design | 4 years | ~3,60,000 per year | ~90% of participating students in campus placement got placed |
| Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore | Bachelorsof Design | 4 years | ~5,25,000 per year | ~95% placement year-on-year |
| Indian School of Design and Innovation, Mumbai | Bachelor of Design | 4 years | ~2,70,000 per semester | 100% internship opportunities in 2016 |
| Unitedworld Institute of Design, Ahmedabad | Bachelors in Design | 4 years | ~14,00,000 for the entire four-year term | ~95% placement year-on-year |
The above table is indicative of the options available to design aspirants. There are many more institutes and agencies out there in the field which offer a variety of courses to choose from. More importantly, the above institutes have other campuses and the semester rates vary campus to campus. Usually, a semester lasts 6 months. While the above touches upon mainly the undergraduate programmes, most fashion and design institutes offer lateral programmes, post-graduate courses as well as doctoral programmes. OPUS classes prepare students with both theoretical and practical lessons as well as a variety of mock tests.
Variety of design courses on the anvil
Under design courses, you will find newer avenues open up like Communications Design,Industrial Design and Transportation Design. Pearl Academy additionally offers Interior & Spatial Design, Product & Lifestyle Design, Fashion Styling & Image Design. Students are also branding out to pursue courses like Interior & Furniture Design as well as Product & Industrial Design. Among the design courses that MIT Institute of Design, Pune, offers are Product Design, Transportation Design, Retail Design, Graphics Design, Film and Video Design, User Interface Experience Design, among others. Indian School of Design and Innovation (ISDI) additionally offers a course called Strategic Design Management which teaches you to innovate, manage and build design process-centric organisations. The OPUS course you will enrol into makes you future ready to take on the design world by storm by clearing the entrance exams of these institutes.
Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology offers students new-age courses like Business Services and System Design, Human Centered Design, Industrial Arts and Design Practices, Information Arts and Information Design Practices as well as Public Space Design
NIFT courses, by and large, are focussed on textile and accessory design. The Masters programme in Fashion Technology, however, calls for engineering graduates.
In most of the four-year bachelor’s programmes, the first three years are spent in campus with classroom training, faculty interactions and a variety of design projects to work on. The design courses equip studentswith travel, craft, illustration, photography, designing besides the regular course work.
Future forward in the fashion design world
As per latest estimates, the Indian textile industry is valued around $108 billion and expected to reach $223 billion by 2022. This industry employs over 45 million people directly, and 60 million people indirectly. It Indian Textile Industry contributes approximately 5% per cent to India’s GDP, and 14% to overall Index of Industrial Production (IIP). The textile industry is also one of the largest contributes to India’s export with approximately 13.5% of the country’s total export. With OPUS preparatory courses to take on the fashion and design world, you are on the threshold of a promising career ahead.
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Dear Akanksha,
My name is Manu Mehrotra. My daughter has been allocated NIFT Kolkata provisionally, however, final seat allocation is still awaited. She also got through Pearl Academy, New Delhi. She wants to pursue Fashion Communication.
In case, her seats are finalized for NIFT Kolkata, we were highly inquisitive to understand if we may proceed with NIFT Kolkata or Pearl Academy (New Delhi).
We are currently resident in Delhi NCR. Kindly suggest.