Changing Face of the Fashion Industry
The Fashion Industry is a multi billion business industry which largely depends on its unorganized skilled labour. In spite of technological advancement and computerization of machines, this sector has to depend largely on manual labour. The rate at which the pace of fashion keeps changing makes it impossible to design automatic machines and develop software for each change. And this is why no matter how advance technology gets, the industry will always require trained labour to do the job.
The closely connected garment industry also has to largely depend on the textile industry which in turn is dependent upon weavers, dyers, printers etc. Similarly, the fashion industry depends largely on tailors, hand and machine embroiderers. The process of garment manufacturing involves drafting, cutting, stitching, finishing, checking, thread cutting, hemming, buttonholing, button stitching, brocade fixing etc. Each of these specific task is done by specific groups in the industry.
Normally these tailors and embroiderers are people who have learnt the art from their ancestors and have witnessed it since childhood. Therefore, these people have adopted it as a profession. They may have also worked as a child labour in a tailor\’s shop by being involved in odd jobs like pressing, setting, hemming, etc. As such, these people may have gradually mastered the job over the years. It should be underscored that these people have no formal training and therefore are not aware about latest changes in the fashion industry.
The garment industry has two types of tailors:
∎ Those who have their own shops in the market and deal with a specific clientele of either ladies, kids or gents. Garments for gents are more specialized in contrast to those for women and children. As a result, there is a variation of skill level here.
∎ Those who work for the ready made ready made garment business. The system in the ready made garment industry follows the assembly line where one worked does part of the job. For instance, someone may only be concerned with stitching buttons. Hence, there is not much scope for creativity.
As can be seen, there is an urgent need to combine the skills of these two groups of tailors for the benefit of the garment industry. This assumes more importance when we highlight the concept of garment manufacturing where it might be required to make unique styles or many samples of a particular style. Furthermore, garments are made to suit a general class of bodily sizes instead of a particular person or customer. This it is evident that the fashion industry requires trained tailors for various jobs. Moreover, these tailors should be aware of the changing fashion scenario. Considering the dynamic or ever changing fashion industry, it is important that we have suitable training courses for tailors. Such contemporary training will ensure that the workers’ knowledge and skills are not obsolete for the market. This has happened very recently. For instance, tailors working with hand drive or pedal driven machines lost their jobs when power driven machines were introduced. Thus, refresher courses are really required for such tailors to brush their knowledge about the latest technology as well as the latest materials available.
The modern day training is thus focused on nurturing skills for the fashion industry. The training courses maximises the potential of the large pool of unorganised labour for the benefit of the garment and the fashion industry.
