Skillfast-UK, the Sector Skills Council for fashion and textiles is calling for MPs to back a new campaign, “No skills, no fashion,” to encourage fashion colleges and universities to put more focus on pattern-cutting, garment construction and other technical fashion skills.
About 3,000 students graduate from fashion courses each year in the UK and according to Skillfast-UK, top designers and brands say they are struggling to find quality employees because the candidates are lacking the skills and knowledge to turn their creative ideas into realistic designs.
Skillfast-UK’s director of marketing and communications, Louise Wood said: “It is not that the students are lacking in creativity, they are not being given the right technical skills to produce their ideas. The problem is that it is more expensive to have pattern cutting and sewing machines in the classroom versus just having a course on the creative side.”
Which is why the new campaign, “No skills, no fashion” is being launched. Skillfast-UK hopes that this will encourage policy makers and educationalists to address the skills crisis.
The campaign is hoping to tackle the fashion skills problem in a number of different ways. It has launched an online petition for fashion employers (www.skillfast-uk.org), a careers advice website for young people thinking of going into fashion (www.canucutit.co.uk), and a possible “couture academy” for London, to specialise in teaching of technical skills for fashion.
To mark the launch of the “No skills, no fashion” campaign, models wearing toiles (a fashion designer’s first technical “mock-up” of a garment) posed in protest on St Stephen’s Green, in front of the House of Commons.
The models were joined by couturier and London Fashion Week exhibitor Helen David, of English Eccentrics (one of the designers supporting the campaign) and Linda Florance, chief executive of Skillfast-UK.
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