Fashion Designer Training Institutions Are Tedious And Need To Be Highlighted

It was 9 p.m. in the room on the ground floor of a building behind Beijing Today Art Museum. Meng Xiangqi was still drawing on the table, with a sewing machine in front of her. There were also about ten young girls of her age in the room. Everyone was holding the pen in their hands with concentration. They had no idea that this building was one of the few lights still on in that street.
　　

Meng Xiangqi wore bright red lipstick and painted a slightly raised eyeliner at the end, but she was still childish when speaking. Under 20 years old, she is a freshman at Parsons School of Design, the top design school in the United States, and this room full of sewing machines is a workshop called VO5 Clothing Training Institute.

　　
A year ago, Meng Xiangqi, a senior high school student, applied for a bachelor's degree in costume design in the United States through this training institution. After more than a year of intermittent courses, she was finally admitted to Alexander Wang's alma mater, Parsons, New York.

　　
In fact, in China, more and more institutions like VO5 are doing overseas design training, together with the emergence of buyers' shops and independent designer brands in this market. If you search, you will find that the sentence "help you apply for a first-class art school" is full of search engines. Although these training institutions sound very similar to English training institutions such as New Oriental and Global IELTS, the difference is that you rarely see the guarantee of "Refund without taking the offer from a certain school" in their publicity.

　　
On the way to the world's top art and design colleges, it is more important and more difficult to show the talent to the admissions officer than to submit a beautiful TOEFL IELTS and GPA transcript.

　　
"The core of art student application is professional ability, that is, works." Zhao Xin, the founder of VO5, said to the interface reporter, "English is a rigid standard. You can talk to foreigners only when you have it, and intermediary services are the normal process of studying abroad. Only professional ability can judge whether the student is going to St. Martin or something else."

　　
Different from students applying for science and engineering, business and other majors, art examinees need to have their own collection of works - take the application for St. Martin's College of Arts in England as an example, a picture album showing the development of design ideas, as well as ready to wear works are necessary.

　　
"If people come to us with the goal of studying abroad, they probably have a guilty conscience and think that their ability is not up to the standards of foreign countries. So training institutions can help them prepare work collections and picture books, and teachers will guide them to do it step by step," said Zhao Xin.

　　
Since there is no quantitative standard, training can only start from stimulating students' creativity. Most of the courses are divided into creative thinking courses, craft courses, hand drawn renderings courses or the use of design software. In short, while teaching a student to draw, the training teacher needs to find out what they are good at, which can be color, cutting, or the use of materials.

How can a person not know his specialty? You might ask. In fact, such cases are not rare. "After the college entrance examination, I don't know what my major is.", "How can I know what I am good at?" These are posts that can be seen everywhere on Zhihu. In China, general education has been extended to universities. In 2012, MyCOS Research Company investigated that 30% of Chinese college students were dissatisfied with their chosen majors.

　　
Just like this, the students' motivation for seeking art training is ambiguous. It is not to fill the defects of a certain subject, but to lack self cognition. VO5 once had a student who studied biology as an undergraduate, and only turned to apply for clothing design as a graduate student. More and more people suddenly wake up and decide to become a monk halfway. They need a way to reach the other side of their dreams from zero foundation, while design training institutions that do not rely on the existence of Chinese universities are just opening their doors.

　　
Since 2011, such design training institutions have entered a blowout period - besides VO5, Yimeng, also located in Beijing, also opened this year; In 2013, PSONE joined the training market again. This is only in Beijing, and there are many design training institutions in Shanghai, Chengdu, Guangzhou and other places. There are not only private design training institutions, but also training institutions directly under the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Tsinghua Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology and other colleges and universities.

　　
On the same timeline, you will find that the number of students who want to learn design is increasing, which is the same trend as the development of China's fashion industry. Also around 2011, local buyer stores such as Dongliang and Yishangmen gradually emerged and grew. At the same time, China's luxury market has witnessed an amazing expansion - from 2009 to 2011, China's luxury market has witnessed double-digit growth every year, with more than 100 luxury brands opening new stores a year.

　　
The circulation of information According to the 2014 data of the British Higher Education Statistics Bureau, the number of Chinese students studying business in the UK has increased by nearly 50% to 4000 in the past five years, while fashion and design has become the most popular subject among Chinese students after business, with the number rapidly increasing to about 1600. Kevin McCarthy, the head of education and culture of the London Development Agency under the London Municipal Government, once said at an event: "In the past five years, the number of Chinese students majoring in fashion and design has increased by 158%."

　　
Most of the world's best design schools are located in Europe and the United States. Belgium has Antwerp Royal Academy of Art, London has Central Saint Martin and London fashion students, Italy has Malanioni College, Paris has ESMOD Fashion Design Institute, the United States has Parsons Design Institute and New York Fashion Design Institute, etc. Almost every school has a famous name in the fashion industry behind it, For example, Antwerp Royal Academy of Art has "Antwerp Six Gentlemen", and Parsons School of Design has Alexander Wang, who is popular in recent years.

Even so, most people still choose to study in Britain and the United States. Although they are all English speaking countries, Britain and the United States have different styles in design education.

　　
"Britain pays more attention to creativity, and America is more commercialized." Chen Yuhan, a teacher who teaches clothing at Yimeng, explained to the interface reporter, "Students who go to the United States are generally very good at English, because American schools have strict score cards, while the United Kingdom has more artistic precipitation and pays more attention to the characteristics of designers, so if you meet really talented students, you can go to linguistics school first even if the language score is not enough."

　　
Chen Yuhan graduated from the Central Saint Martin Knitting Department. Her application for the major of garment design accounts for 40% - 50% of the total business of Yimeng. On the dream list of those students, Chen Yuhan's alma mater, Central Saint Martin, is the existence of "not wanting to take the exam, only failing".

　　
In 2007, when there was no training institution for overseas students, Chen Yuhan applied to St. Martin himself

　　
For Chinese students, it is often because of the names of several alumni that you know the Central Saint Martin. Maybe the legendary John Galliano and Alexander McQueen, maybe the new Chinese designers Qiu Hao, Wanyi Fang and Liu Qingyang, or perhaps Marta Marques and Paulo Almeida, the duo who won this year's LVMH Designer Award. The Central Saint Martin School of Design, which never gives scholarships, has become a hot topic.

　　
"The competition in Saint Martin is much bigger than I was then," said Chen Yuhan.

　　
The star making factory San Martin only recruits more than 100 people in the world every year, and no more than one third of Asians, including South Korea and Japan, which have done a good job in art education. In some low tide years, only a few Chinese students can go to St. Martin.

　　
However, compared with the overseas study market of business and engineering, the design overseas study training will only be an extremely small market. "VO5 does not account for much. In the whole design overseas study market, no one is the largest, and none is large." Zhao Xin said to the interface reporter.

　　
Until now, VO5 has a total of 150 students who want to study abroad this year, and there are more than 200 people in Yimeng, including nearly 100 students who study clothing. PSONE's target enrollment this year is only 100.