Kingston University graduate fashion show. Photograph: Ezzidin Alwan Over the past two decades, fashion has become one of the most competitive courses at university, with at least six applications for each place at the top schools. But there is no guarantee of a job at the end, says Alex Brownless, a fashion designer who co-founded the Arts Thread network to help creative people launch their brands and gain employment. “The top schools have long lists of alumni designers, but when you look closely you find half their graduates are not working at all or not working in the industry. I know a major London institution where a shop assistant in Top Shop, Oxford Circus, qualifies as a job in fashion. Students rack up huge debts and struggle to pay for materials and think there will be a job at the end because their course has an 89% employment rate, and they end up in Kentucky Fried Chicken. It’s incredibly cruel.”
Brownless thinks universities should publish detailed statistics on how many of their fashion students are employed and what they’re doing a year after graduating. But Mower says this is not the only problem with fashion schools: while the number of fashion courses has increased, they don’t necessarily cover the skills needed for the industry. “A huge skills gap is opening up – pattern cutting has gone by the board in many colleges, while the design houses are crying out for skilled pattern cutters and pay good money. People come out having designed a collection but it is the technician who has sewn it,” she says.
Joshua Kane, one of Russell Brand’s favourite designers, is a bespoke tailor and also worries that skills are being lost. He took extra classes to work on his cutting and sewing techniques. But he disagrees with the claim that fashion schools don’t give students enough help. “I would say we had plenty of exposure to the industry. In the end, it comes down to the work ethic of the individual students and how hard they fight to make themselves more employable. Some of those I meet today don’t have it,” says Kane, who graduated from Kingston University in 2007.
Ayako Furness, a womenswear textile designer at Burberry, who moved from Japan to study at CSM, agrees. “I was surprised at how much students are expected to learn by themselves in the UK and they didn’t teach much technical-wise but I disagree with people who say they don’t help you find work. CSM helped me to get internships and then my first job with Louis Vuitton.”
Fashion design courses are not there to teach business and enterprise, says Elinor Renfrew, BA (Hons) fashion course director at Kingston University. “Our students work on real briefs with real companies and we make as many links with employers as we can. That’s how they learn about the industry.”
Willie Walters, course director of BA (Hons) fashion at CSM, says the press show is just one of the many things CSM does to link students with employers, and disagrees that it can be unfair. “Students know from the outset that they will not all be able to show their work there. We hold assessment shows two weeks before the press event, where all students show their work. This takes a full day. There is also an exhibition in June where they show their full portfolios, attended by press and potential employers.”
But she is proud of the independent spirit of students who launched their own fashion show. “I don’t mind young people rebelling, that is what they should be doing.”
She’s not going to tell them to rebel again next year though. “That would be like having your mum say ‘that’s nice darling’.”
The Business of Fashion’s top 20 undergraduate fashion courses 1 Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, UK2 Bunka Fashion College, Japan3 Kingston University, UK4 Parsons the New School for Design, US5 Fashion Institute of Technology, US6 Polimoda, Italy7 University of Westminster, UK8 London College of Fashion, UK9 Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia10 Drexel university, US11 Shenkar College of Engineering, Design and Art, Israel12 Ryerson University School of Fashion, Canada13 Stephens College, US14 Nottingham Trent University, UK15 Savannah College of Art and Design, US16 Philadelphia University, US17 University for the Creative Arts – Epsom, UK18 Istituto Marangoni, Italy19 Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology, China20 Hogeschool Van Amsterdam, Netherlands
The Business of Fashion’s top 10 master’s fashion courses 1 Royal College of Art, UK2 Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, UK3 Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Belgium4 London College of Fashion, UK5 Savannah College of Art and Design, US6 Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia7 Institut Français de la Mode, France8 Ryerson University School of Fashion, Canada9 Polimoda, Italy10 Philadelphia University, US