The sartorially conservative city of Chennai will soon inaugurate its first, internationally benchmarked fashion institute. The Pearl Academy of Fashion (PAF), which has built itself a reputation in fashion and textile education for over 12 years since the promotion of its first New Delhi campus in 1993 and its second campus in Jaipur last year, is all set to admit its first batch of 125 students at its Nungambakkam institute on August 1. Promoted by Pearl Global Ltd (estb: 1992) one of India’s leading garment export houses (annual sales: Rs 1,500 crore), PAF boasts collaborations with several national and international institutes including Nottingham Trent University, UK; LDT Nagold, Germany; and the Amsterdam Fashion Institute, Netherlands, for student, faculty and information exchange. PAF, Chennai will offer a globally recognised BA (Hons) degree and postgraduate diploma programmes validated by the Nottingham Trent University, UK. “The choice of Chennai for our third campus was dictated by Tamil Nadu’s traditional strength as a textiles manufacturing base and its proximity to garment industry centres like Tirupur, Salem and Erode. Our industry-oriented study programmes will help bridge the wide gap between skill-sets required by the textile industry and what fashion institutes deliver,” says S. Ramalingam, director, Pearl Academy of Fashion, Chennai. A textile engineering graduate and industrial engineering postgrad of Anna University, Ramalingam has wide experience of this booming industry. He was the first chairperson of the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT: estb 1986), where he served for five years before joining Indonesia’s textiles and engineering giant, Texmaco, as vice-president for four years. He returned to India in 1996 and became an entrepreneur, sourcing garments for European markets, before assuming charge of PAF, Chennai last December. Starting August, PAF Chennai will offer four-year BA (Hons) degree programmes in fashion design and fashion merchandising and production, apart from two-year postgraduate diploma programmes in fashion merchandising, garment manufacturing and textile design (home fashion). Tuition fees range from Rs.60,000-70,000 per semester. Admission is based on performance in an all-India entrance test to be held on June 4, 2006. The first batch of students (25 per course) will be instructed by a permanent, highly qualified faculty of 10-12 and visiting professionals. Housed in the heart of the city in a modish building, PAF, Chennai boasts state-of-the-art textile labs, design and drawing studios, seminar rooms, pattern making, sewing, knitting and cutting labs, computer centre with CAD/CAM software, visual merchandising, fabric testing labs, and a large library with audio visual and photography facilities. “We want to establish the PAF brand in the south, build a rapport with industry and introduce internationally benchmarked study programmes. We are confident we can attain all these objectives in record time,” says Ramalingam. Wind in your sails! Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai) Confident confidence builder Come admissions season and every institution of professional education irrespective of lineage or reputation promises prospective students “guaranteed job placement”. But after completion, most of them suffer acute amnesia on this score. Certainly very few institutional managements offer compensation for failure to deliver the placement promise. The…
