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Local designers make a mark

Refayet Ullah Mirdha
****“The garments buyers and factory owners are satisfied with the performance of those locally produced fashion designers and product developers. Thejresh graduates are creative as they compete with the foreign experts”****
SHAMIM, who did not give his surname, has been working with a renowned European clothing brand as a senior design and product developer in Dhaka for a couple of years now.
He collects more than $2,000 a month as salaries. Some of his colleagues, mostly foreign design and product developers, who have vast experience in this profession draw more than $3000 a month.
Upon graduating in Accounting, Shamim began his career as a fashion designer at a local garments group seven years ago with a monthly remuneration package of Tk 15,000. At the time, he had only one Bangladeshi colleague. The rest were all foreigners for a dearth of local skilled fashion designers.
Since then, he has gathered experience and a diploma on fashion and design to be more informed on the subject.
The scenario has changed a lot in Bangladesh over the years. “Now I have many experienced Bangladeshi colleagues, along with foreigners,” Shamim said.
With development of the fashion institutes, more and more graduates are coming out every year to get jobs with international names, fashion houses and buying houses in the country.
Creativity and talent plays an important role in determining demand for designers, he said.
Chowdhury, who also refused to give his surname, is working as a fashion designer and product developer with a Hong Kong-based garments buying house. He said a good number of graduates are coming to this profession every year as demand is increasing.
Graduates mostly start work as
assistants to the more experienced designers, he said. "The most important thing about this profession is maintaining the deadline. As a result, many cannot continue," he added.
He receives nearly $1,000 a month and said many Bangladeshi people are now employed in such sophisticated fashion and design develop-
ment work.
Previously, Bangladeshis were mainly involved in sewing, but now they are employed in fashion and design, he said.
The garment factory owners have to be more responsible in making the work more popular, he added.
The job as a fashion designer and
product developer has glamour, but at the same time, there are some challenges as well, he added.
Rushmita Alam, head of the Fashion Design and Technology department of BGMEA Institute of Fashion and Technology (BIFT), said every year 150 graduates come out from this institute to address demand for fashion designers both in the local garment factories and multinationals.
Not only BIFT, some universities have also opened courses on fashion and design, as demand is soaring, she said.
"Now the local educational institutes are equipped to address demand for fashion designers — which was not the case previously,” she says.
There are two important aspects in fashion and design — one is solely design development and the other is product development, she added.
In design development, a designer has to work hard as the employee has
to spend time getting to know the culture, environment, geography and surroundings of a particular market or area.
In the case of product development, designers work on designs provided by buyers. Here, designers make the product attractive by adding more value, she said.
A fashion designer has to possess a creative mindset, because designs change quickly.
Designers have to travel the world to capture the essence of fashion trends for future forecasts on the matter, she added.
But the problem is that they are not able to produce any individual designs for a lack of patronisation from the companies that employ them, said Jahangir Karim, head of fashion and merchandising of International Institute of Fashion and Design (INIFD).
Companies do not want to spend a huge amount of money to develop designs, he said. To produce a unique design, a designer requires spending at least six months in a foreign land to study the environment and customer surroundings to know what is popular there, he added.
As a result, local fashion designers develop designs supplied by the international buyers. “Buyers have a lot of requirements that need to be
fulfilled by a designer."
Fashion designing is related to many things. It is difficult as it is a matter of psychology. Moreover, no mega fashion events take place in the country, from which the students and participants can learn something.
At the institutes, most learning is
imparted theoretically. There are not enough scopes for practical learning.
However, a few garment factories are working to develop fashion designs locally.
There are many renowned organisations worldwide that deal with fashion and design only, he said.
KM Rezaul Hasanat, managing director of Viyellatex Group, said many qualified designers from local educational institutes are joining the industry now.
“The garments buyers and factory owners are satisfied with the performance of those locally produced fashion designers and product developers. The fresh graduates are creative as they compete with the foreign experts,” he added.
An experienced design team is important when a garments group works for a renowned clothing brand, he said. In most cases, the buyers mainly supply the designs, he added.
reefat@thedailystar.net