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Highsnobiety and Spring Studios at Amsterdam Fashion Academy

During the past weeks we hosted many professionals of the fashion industry at the Amsterdam Fashion Academy and more will visit us by the end of the current academic year! Masterclasses, company visits, special projects: we believe that connecting students with our industry network is essential to develop the future game changers of the fashion system.

Among the guest lecturers, we had the pleasure to host Highsnobiety and Spring Studios. Read more below.

Highsnobiety

Stefanos Constantinou, Brand Partnerships & General Manager, offered our students an insight into the company. Stefanos talked about the brand’s process for creating campaigns and gave students a brief to channel their inner fashion publisher.

Highsnobiety is a global fashion brand that unites community, content, and commerce. They provide clients with a full range of services, including consumer insights, strategy and consulting, creative concepts and production, media, and media planning.

We also welcomed Toumazos Charalambous, Founder and Creative Director of Tommazo, who shared advices on how to set up a fashion brand.

Spring Studios

We had the pleasure to welcome GianMario Motta, General Manager, and Anouk Jans, Creative Director, who offered us a masterclass about Art & Creative Director. Spring Studios is an advertising agency that delivers success stories for fashion, beauty and luxury brands.

During the masterclass, they showed us Kill your Darlings, Anouk’s documentary film about the world of modern advertising and the creative talent defining it. The film investigates and examines this 150 year-old industry through the eyes of a young, female creative, and features interviews with advertising legends, creative marketers and new talent in the creative industry.

GianMario is a business and digital marketing expert, specializing in the fashion & luxury sector. He has held a number of managerial positions in leading Italian and International agencies where he was responsible for client management, marketing, and new business activities. GianMario joined Spring to develop the agency’s presence in Italy by cultivating and managing a consistent client portfolio, creating the local team, establishing strategic partnerships, and curating the agency’s marketing efforts.

Anouk Jans is the Creative Director of Spring Studios Milan. Over the past decade she has worked on brands from different fields such as Calvin Klein, Schwarzkopf, Birkenstock, Nivea, L’Oreal, McDonalds, Pomellato, Toyota and Bally. She’s known for creating concepts inspired by the next generation and executed in collaboration with young talents. In 2021 her project about teenagers made it on the cover of Zeit Magazine and for Birkenstock she created the first street casted next gen brand campaign. This year, her documentary around the world of advertising premiered at the Cannes Lions and made the AdAge Watchlist. After more than 12 years of experience on brand and agency side, Anouk is determined to create meaningful content for brands that care as much about storytelling as they do about aesthetics.

Diving into licensed merchandise at Difuzed

At the Amsterdam Fashion Academy we believe that our students should experience first-hand how the fashion industry works. Therefore, we implement industry external visits so they can have an insight.

Some days ago we had the opportunity to visit Difuzed, which develops lifestyle products from a variety of brands based on entertainment, fashion, sports, and consumer goods across apparel & fashion accessories. They currently partner up with more than 100 of the most recognised and reputable brands in the world. Our students visited their office, including their warehouse, showroom, sourcing, photo studio, and design and sales departments.

“Last week we visited the company Difuzed. I really enjoyed the tour the company gave us since it opened my perspective on the different types of branding and marketing strategies involved in this type of business. From knowing little to nothing about this before, I learned a great extent about licensing, and about their merchandise for kids and adults. We also looked at their warehouse of the merchandise they provide, and I loved to see how everything works from start to finish. Seeing all of this in action gave me a possible idea and interest for my future in the workplace.” Denisse Hamue, Year 1 bachelor’s degree Fashion Business.

“Last week’s visit to Difuzed was not only an eye-opening experience but also a fun one. We gained lots of knowledge about the world of licensing and got an inside view of what it is like to work there as well. The team at Difuzed is a small but creative group of individuals working in a fast-paced environment.” Tiana Bhojwani, Year 1 bachelor’s degree Fashion Business.

“Our visit to Difuzed was most insightful. We were granted access to the building and given an informative tour through the offices and warehouse. In closing the CEO and several key employees prepared an incredibly extensive presentation on the workings of the fashion merchandising world. Overall, it was a positive and educational experience which inspired me to research the industry further and even to apply for an internship.” Lara Kuiperi, Year 1 bachelor’s degree Fashion Design.

The future of fashion business: interview with Radha Jethu, Associate Head of School

Interview with Radha Jethu, Associate Head of School, about the evolution of the fashion industry and the future of fashion business.

What is your role within the Amsterdam Fashion Academy?

I am part of the management team and I am responsible for the BA (Hons) Fashion Business programme. Regarding the students, I supervise with their dissertations and this year I started teaching the second-year students with future proving fashion business, which is about conducting fashion business on an international level. I wrote a textbook on how to conduct business within the European union, it’s a dutch textbook but the publisher also translated the book to English, it is called International Business.

What interests you most about fashion business?

Well, I think it is a dynamic field and my passion is making the industry more sustainable. Sustainability in the sense of environmental issues. I have to be honest, that’s one of my main focus points, but also human rights and a living wage for workers in production countries. So, my passion about fashion is making it more sustainable in the sense of human rights. I am a lawyer, and my background is based on justice and respecting each other’s human rights. Improving working conditions in production countries such as Asia, Africa, South America and even in the UK. I attended a seminar in the UK based on sustainability and I was really shocked that even on the outsides of London there are areas with factories that have labour conditions that were not up to standard. I know there has been steps taken on a worldwide level to rectify this. I love fashion and I love the process behind fashion, but there still requires more focus on human rights and social responsibility.

Fashion business is ever evolving, especially in recent times. How do you keep the programmes in line with emerging business trends?

We have our Professional Advisory Committee, so they keep us focused on what is currently happening within the fashion industry. We also attend seminars and meetings with relevant institutions, we talk a lot with the industry. They are our resources to keep us up to date with industry movements. It’s important for the students to see what is happening in the professional field. With the help we get from the professional advisory board, students can have a meeting with recruiters that are working in industry with great brands.

Have you seen students showing more interest in online fashion business?

Yes, what we have noticed that not only online business, but social media marketing is obviously a popular topic more recently. Most people think TikTok is only for children but they have a business option, and it is a proven social media marketing tool.

What area in fashion business do you see the most growth?

The future of fashion business is definitely in social media marketing and branding. Covid influenced fashion by implementing a more comfortable style so we see our students having more of a focus on lounge wear. We have seen collaborations in industry between luxury and streetwear brands as a result of this, a great example being LV x SUPREME.

You mentioned working with the students on their dissertations. What do you think makes a great subject matter?

Basically, the focus point is on the theoretical part, so we look into contemporary topics. The most popular topic is obviously fast/slow fashion and making the fashion industry more sustainable. So that is the theoretical part, and on the practical side is lots of field research.

There has been a recent focus on learning entrepreneurial skills with Amsterdam Fashion Academy, could you tell us more about the changes?

Yes, we have changed the curriculum and implemented an entrepreneurial side of the fashion business and design programmes. So now we have a shared entrepreneurial course for our business and design students where they can collaborate together as this is what happens once you are in a professional field. You have to work together. So, with this entrepreneurial focus, students learn how to run their own business or have skills they can utilise once hired in industry.

It was very theoretical when I studied at university and there were a lot of students complaining that their knowledge was only based on theory. The Dutch system was changed so we have the theoretical part but also the practical side like internships. They are a very important part to our programme and the students learn a lot from them. The internships within our programmes are mandatory for 4 months. We are looking to maybe add another internship for 6 months as we see such great results. We see students that sometimes struggle with the theoretical parts of the programme do extremely well once within their internships. You really see a difference.

With two publications already do you have plans for anymore?

No, I think it’s time to slow down. I think the adjustment from covid lockdown made us all learn to take the time for ourselves and relax more.

Kristina Szasz named Director Business Unit BOSS Womenswear at HUGO BOSS

Kristina Szasz is member of the Amsterdam Fashion Academy’s Professional Advisory Committee.

Kristina Szasz has been appointed Director Business Unit BOSS Womenswear at HUGO BOSS AG, effective September 1.

Previously, she held a number of management positions at renown fashion companies − such as Karl Lagerfeld, Nike, PVH, Emilio Pucci, Levi Strauss or Abercrombie & Fitch. Most recently, Szasz held the position of Chief Product and Marketing Officer at s.Oliver.

Furthermore, she is a board member of the Amsterdam Fashion Academy and in the jury of the La Jolla Fashion Film Festivals (USA). In her new role, with her many years of extensive global experience in brand management as well as in design and product development, Kristina Szasz will continue to drive the realignment of BOSS Womenswear.

Source: HUGO BOSS

The Professional Advisory Committee (PAC) collaborates with the Amsterdam Fashion Academy’s Board of Directors and Management Team in implementing improvements, to ensure that the Amsterdam Fashion Academy is constantly at the forefront of fashion education and aligned with trends and needs of the fashion industry. The aim is to offer the students a unique learning opportunity that mixes academic and industry based research with entrepreneurship and creativity.

The PAC is an essential part of our vision, which is based on 5 pillars: entrepreneurship, sustainability, research, digital transformation, and individuality. It also has a direct relationship with the students of both Bachelor’s degree with Honours programmes in Fashion Design and Fashion Business, to live industry led projects, organise visits to the brands’ headquarters, offer internship opportunities and provide guest lecturers.

Fashion sustainability: what are consumers looking for?

Our first-year students from BA (Hons) Fashion with Textiles Design worked on a project related to fashion sustainability for their Textiles module taught by Alexandra Barker. The project was displayed at the ABN AMRO Bank N.V. in Dam Square, Amsterdam. Throughout the module, our students explored different methods of making fashion more sustainable and learnt skills they can implement in future designs. Additionally, the students learnt about the importance of championing the message of sustainability within the fashion industry.

With the demand for sustainable products constantly increasing in fashion, brands are not just working on ways of making their products more sustainable in order to please the consumers; they are also reflecting on the way that they are addressing the issue. So what type of sustainable measures are shoppers looking for? Nosta conducted a survey asking what consumers look for in ‘sustainable fashion brands’. Reducing package material, using recycled fabrics in garments, and providing fair and safe labour environments were among the top responses. However, companies are still working on their own strategies for approaching the issue.

Read the full article by Huw Hughes on FashionUnited. Click here.

Second Years are starting their fashion internships!

The second-year students of the BA (Hons) Fashion Business and BA (Hons) Fashion Design are off to work at their fashion internships for the next months.

They arrived at the Amsterdam Fashion Academy from different countries during a warm late-summer day in September 2017. We worked all together very hard for one year and half to prepare them for their first big step into the fashion industry. And now, it’s time for them to spread the wings and fly.

We want to wish all students good luck! We are sure that they will learn a lot from a real experience in the industry! We are looking forward to seeing them in September as new and young professionals of the fashion world! Of course, we’ll keep you up to date about all the new developments and feedbacks of their fashion internships.

(Photo credit: Ping Huang)

Virginie Thirion, BA (Hons) Fashion Business, 22 years old from Belgium, will work in her home country at Ambiorix in the Creative Department. “I am doing my internship as a product manager for the 125th year celebration. I will develop the collection and bring it to the market. They expect me to create the idea behind the collection and doing all the marketing research”.

Phillip Roessen, BA (Hons) Fashion Business, 23 years old from the Netherlands: “I am doing my internship at Amsterdam-based retail store FOUR Amsterdam. I am working as an “All-round E-commerce intern” focussing on website optimisation, online sales and developing my own customer base around the world”.

Zoe Kooren, BA (Hons) Fashion Business, 22 years old from Belgium, says: “My position/department for my upcoming internship at Gassan Diamonds will be in visual merchandising. During the next months I expect to learn a lot about how the internal organizations work within a luxury company. I’m looking forward to working with the styling and visual merchandising teams”.

Rebecca van Caem, 22 years old from the Netherlands, and Robin Hubert, 19 years old from the Netherlands, students of the BA (Hons) Fashion Design will both work at Reconstruct. “I am starting my internship at an Amsterdam-based clothing brand Reconstruct, where I hope to learn more about the process of producing a collection. I’m really interested in getting a better understanding of how the industry works and be able to create my own brand in the future”, Robin says.

Tricie Bergmann, 22 years old from Austria: “I will be moving to the UK to start my internship at Aitor Throup Studio. I’m very passionate about sewing, so I wanted an internship in which I would be involved in the production process, with a designer whose work I genuinely admire”.

Ellen Hawes, 21 years old from the UK: “I worked with fashion designer Kasper Jongejan over the course of about 4 months and was helping him to create the garments for his collection that was to be part of Dutch Sustainable Fashion Week. I did a lot of weaving when I was with him but then moved on to pattern cutting for some hats which were going to be featured in his new shop”.

Alexandra Poláková, BA (Hons) Fashion Design, 23 years old from Slovakia: “My internship will take place at a design studio of a young Dutch designer Tess van Zalinge, in Amsterdam. I will be Fashion Design Intern and some of my daily tasks will include gathering inspiration for new projects, translating ideas into sketches and designs, creating moodboards and technical drawings, making patterns and transforming them into garments. I am looking forward to being part of the development and realisation of the collections from the first sketches to a fashion show”.

Lisa Wiendels, BA (Hons) Fashion Business, 22 years old from the Netherlands: “I am doing an internship at Runes Athletica as a Fashion Intern with a specialization in Social Media. I have been given the opportunity to assist in all areas for the launch and development of this start up brand”.

Liana Weber, BA (Hons) Fashion Business, 21 years old from Germany, will work as Social Media Intern with a DJ/artist in Amsterdam.

Marijne Weggemans, BA (Hons) Fashion Business, 23 years old from the Netherlands, will work with popular fashion blogger Rebecca Laurey as Social Media Intern.

Maria Sole Novelli, 23 years old from Italy, will be intern at Suitsupply, renowned Dutch men’s fashion brand.

Sophia Pohlmann, 20 years old from Austria, is in Germany working at A Kind of Guise, brand that offers a wide range of menswear, womenswear and accessories.

Gabriella Frempong, 27 years old from the Netherlands, will work at The New Originals in Amsterdam.

Domitille Georget, 24 years old from France, is starting soon her internship at La Belle Studio, Amsterdam.

Sabrina Marinus, 25 years old from the Netherlands, will do her internship with Dutch fashion designer Dennis Diem.

Merel van der Laak, 21 years old from the Netherlands, will work with Dutch illustrator Anne Stooker.

The busy life of the Amsterdam Fashion Academy’s students

Dutch Sustainable Fashion Week:
A group of students of the Fashion Business (Hons) BA, Fashion with Textiles Design (Hons) BA, Fashion Foundation Diploma and Fast-Track Fashion Design & Business programmes, guided by the lectures Deborah Smailes and Giancarlo Pazzanese, had the opportunity to work in the backstage of the Dutch Sustainable Fashion Week on Friday, the 12th of October 2018.

Tafari Lake, student of the Fashion Foundation programme, shared his experience with us: “It was a really nice experience for all of us and the first time for me in the backstage of a fashion show. We had the chance to help with managing the location and, above all, with dressing up the models. I started the Fashion Foundation programme two weeks ago and I really like the mix of fashion design and fashion business that it offers. What do I want to study after? Before the course, I would have said Fashion Design, but now I’m also very interested in the

business side of fashion. I will have a more clear idea in June!“.

Professional lectures:
Every week we bring professional guest lecturers at our boutique academy to give the students new learning opportunities and insights from the fashion industry.

Nasheli Ortiz, London Fashion Week and Paris Fashion Week designer, presented her last collection Stranded and her previous pieces, featured on Vogue and Forbes.

Davinder Madaher is a print and textiles designer who shared with the students his 25 years experience in the field and gave feedback to the 2nd year Fashion with Textiles Design (Hons) BA students on their textiles projects.

Sara Tugnolo, former marketing manager at Calvin Klein, met the Fashion Business (Hons) BA students to talk about how to grow a business.

Renske Mennen is an expert trendwatcher and founder of Trend Agency Move. She offered a lecture to all students about fashion trends.

Fashion brands and more: which three came out on top at the Academy?

Being small and offering personal attention to our students is very important to us. We want to get to know each student personally and make them feel at home during their time at our international fashion academy in Amsterdam. With this in mind, we asked each first-year student to tell us their top three favourite brands, not just in the fashion world but generally, to help us find out more about their tastes and the business models of this generation.

As expected, answers varied greatly, but there was an undisputed winner: Gucci is our students’ top brand. They don’t just love Gucci’s products, but also the branding and marketing strategy; an interesting case study for both Fashion Business BA and Fashion with Textiles Design BA students. Gucci is an Italian luxury brand of fashion and leather goods founded in Florence, Italy, in 1921. According to Forbes, as of May 2017, the brand value was around $12.7 billion.

Second place is shared by Zara and Apple, while third place sees a wide group of labels. The list of favourite brands changes when we separate the outcomes between the Fashion Business BA and the Fashion with Textiles Design BA programmes. While the top-three list of those who study fashion business is again composed of Gucci, Zara and Apple, the Fashion with Textiles Design students have a different taste: Dior, Balmain and Comme de Garçons are their favourite best brands.

Logically, fashion brands dominate the whole list, with some exceptions like Jeep, Tasty or Costa Coffee. It is also interesting to underline that Iris van Herpen was mentioned by many students. And speaking of this innovative Dutch fashion designer, did you see the photo we took at the Johannes Vermeer Prijs 2017?

Fashion Buyer: “This is how you will dress this season”

Do you know that each dress, pair of shoes, bathing suit or bracelet you bought has been selected with great care among thousands of alternative pieces? And do you know who the person is who decides that this season’s colour trend is red or green?

The fashion chain is very long and complex, but there is an expert who selects the products that stores sell: the fashion buyer. Buyers are not only purchasing agents, but also analysers, negotiators and deal-makers. They research, evaluate and buy products for companies to either resell to customers or use in their everyday operations.

Buyers occupy a specific key role in the fashion industry: they are the people who determine which products reach store shelves, appear in catalogues and online. They do the footwork, the research and make the deals to buy large quantities of products for their companies, who then sell them to customers, or use them to create new materials that they then sell to customers. Undoubtedly, the fashion buyer needs to know how the market and the selling process work, and always stay up-to-date on what it is happening in their specific sector. To do this, they constantly visit expos and fairs all over the world to understand the “moods” and forecast the next trends.

This academic year our teaching staff includes a 10-year experienced buyer, Gina Shanks, who will reveal the secrets of being a successful buyer during our next Meetup on Tuesday, October 3 at 6:30 pm. “The buyer is not a professional role exclusive for the fashion industry, of course, but it is an essential figure for each kind of market, from electronics to food, from toys to furniture”, Gina explains. “During the Meetup, I will speak about a buyer’s day-to-day tasks and the personal skills one needs to have to be a great buyer”.

The Meetup is free and everyone is invited! You can find more details and confirm your participation here.

European Fashion Market: our speech at the African Fashion Designers Expo 2017

It was a big honour for us to be invited at the African Fashion Designers Expo 2017, which has been celebrated on Monday, 28th of August, at the World Fashion Centre. Our new Senior Lecturer, Cristiano Carciani, gave a speech about the European fashion market, in front of professionals of the fashion industry from Nigeria, Ghana and other African countries.

To understand the actual European fashion market, Cristiano made an overview of the fashion design history from 1858, when Charles Frederick Worth begun designing complete collections for his clients and sawing his personal labels on garments he created.

Q. Cristiano, can you tell us a bit of the European fashion design history?

From 1860 to 1960, haute couture’s designers were from Western Europe, specifically from Italy and France: Paul Poiret, Chanel, Elsa Schiapparelli, Salvatore Ferragamo, Christian Dior, Yves Saint Laurent, Roberto Capucci, Valentino, and so on. One hundred year of haute couture: a combination of fine materials, interesting silhouettes and … artisanship.

Q. What happened after the 1960s?

During the 1970s, fashion designers started to experiment with materials and techniques. Let’s think about Paco Rabanne and his clothes made with metals and crafted with hammers and pliers. Then, in the 1980s, catwalks saw the arrival of the prêt-à-porter (or ready-to-wear), a new sector of the fashion industry, in which North American (Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, Betsey Johnson) and Japanese (Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto) designers occupied an important portion of the market. These are the times of mass production, and ten years later, of fast fashion with H&M and Zara. During the 1990s, technology and innovation started to be integrated with fashion design and the main exponent was, certainly, Hussein Chalayan, who created foldable dresses and motor-powered skirts.

Q. What about the new millennium?

Today, the fashion industry is composed of three sectors: haute couture, prêt-à-porter, fast fashion. In haute couture, Middle and Northern European designers are gaining great value. For example, Dutch fashion designers like Iris van Herpen and Viktor & Rolf. While fast fashion is being populated by numerous commercial brands, many Eastern European designers are “conquering” prêt-à-porter world: Ksenia Schnaider from Ukraine, Anton Belinskiy from Ukraine, Situationist from Georgia, Misbhv from Poland. These fashion brands have strong identities, historical and folk references that are new and exotic to Western consumers. Also, since the explosion of internet, prêt-à-porter is also been populated by a lot of independent designers.

Q. What can you tell us about independent brands?

Independent brands are businesses that are owned, run or managed by the designers or their families. They have a fair and transparent supply chain, and no sweatshops. Sustainability is their most important value: they don’t use fur or exotic skins, their products are chemicals-free and have natural or organic ingredients. In addition, they produce limited editions of products, which are made to last and to be worn season after season. In general, independent brands focus more on quality than on trends.

Q. What did you suggest to the fashion designers at the African Fashion Designers Expo 2017?

I think they should follow the example of the independent brands that make of sustainability and transparency their key strength and that produce high-quality products, in limited quantities. They should also focus their attention on the e-commerce and social media channels to reach the global market.

Tag: fashion industry