Grads in gladrags

It's early days yet, but pretty soon the Pearl Academy of Fashion hopes to break ground on a 10-acre site close to Manesar for its intended Rs 40-crore campus.

Having recently completed 10 years, the institute "" which has tie-ups with relevant international colleges "" has set itself an ambitious pattern of growth, though its pace has been far from scorching so far.

But that, as executive director A K G Nair will tell you, is because the Academy has concentrated on quality and technology rather than volumes.

Even so, it has set itself up as a formidable competitor to the National Institute of Fashion Technology, the state-sponsored academia of fashion education in several city centres. Pearl, on the other hand, has centres only in Delhi and Bangalore.

In 1993, the test for Pearl lay in choosing the right students. Today, the institute's selection process has had to turn more stringent. And the popularity of the courses has grown from apparel design to include retail management, merchandising, applied photography, web designing and, now, even a course in fashion media make-up.

On the anvil are courses that may include event management and jewellery design as well as "" in the only direct break from strongly linked affiliations between facets of the fashion industry "" interior design.

Nair has reason to be happy. An evening before the annual convocation programme that would see 200 students receive their undergrad and post-grad degreees (with affiliations from the Nottingham Trent University, UK, LDT Nagold, Germany, the London College of Fashion, and the International College for Professional Photography, Melbourne), he shared percentages with Business Standard.

"Seventy per cent of our graduate students work directly in fashion or its retail business," he shared, "Twenty per cent are indirectly linked to the industry," while the balance 10 per cent have disappeared from Pearl's radar, having migrated, or married, or otherwise remained incommunicado.

It's another matter that 70 per cent of his students are female. "The term fashion," Nair says, "may inhibit men from joining our courses." It's liberating, he says, to think that women are now willing to look for opportunities in production, traditionally a male preserve because of long hours, "but parents are more supportive, and women students more independent", he explains.

The campus in Gurgaon, unlike the current one in New Delhi's Naraina, is to be a residential complex, "though we expect only 60-70 per cent of our 600-plus students to stay on the premises". And yes, like most industries, he sees a potential for BPO intervention in the fashion industry. Another opportunity for Pearl? "Let's not jump the gun," says Nair.