HONG KONG – Designs for bras sold in China remain solidly underwired by unyielding stiff designs and heavy padding, but graduates of the new ACE Style Institute of Intimate Apparel at the Institute of Textiles & Clothing of Hong Kong Polytechnic University are poised to transform the field.
“This is only the second program like it in the world,” said Joanne Yip, a lecturer at the institute. It joins DeMontfort University in Leicester’s Contour Fashion program.
The ACE Style Institute was launched in July by director Winnie Yu Wing-man, who has a doctorate in bra molding from Leeds University, and with a grant from ACE Style Intimate Apparel Ltd. There are 15 students in its full-time, two-year program and 18 part-time, four-year students. Of those, “all the full-time students are women, but three of the part-times are men,” Yip said. It has five academic faculty, with backgrounds in fashion and engineering, and three administrative staff.
While DeMontfort’s program, founded in 1947, focuses on design subjects, the ITC’s training in intimates is as much about technology as aesthetics.
“Hong Kong has a lot of manufacturers in China, and we need people who know about how to manage factory production,” Yip said.
The ITC’s Bachelor of Arts in Intimate Apparel consists of 10 mandatory subjects: mathematics and statistics, health science, materials and processes in product design, body beauty and fit, creative intimate fashion design, practical bra construction, intimate textiles and accessories, intimate pattern CAD, production technology and a seminar.
All students conduct a one-year senior year project and full-time students also do a seven-month trip or industrial placement, which will first be conducted this summer. Whether spent in Hong Kong, China or abroad, the practical training provides hands-on experience and professional contacts in the industry.
No design schools in China have launched similar intimate apparel majors, although the subject is included in most fashion curricula. The Raffles Design Institute at Shanghai’s Donghua University offers an “advanced diploma in fashion design, which covers a broad spectrum of areas that allow our students to build a strong understanding and experience of design, production, marketing and styling abilities,” said Collette Paterson, degree program leader of fashion design there. “Throughout the course, students are exposed to a broad number of markets and design specialists, including lingerie design. Lingerie design is one area of focus within the students’ design and illustration classes.”
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While Raffles Donghua has no immediate plans to add an intimates major, it is “always looking to build on our portfolio of programs, and lingerie design may well be a focus in the future,” Paterson said.
“As good design becomes more and more valued in China, there will be a larger and larger demand from industry for specialist skills from our design graduates and our courses will diversify to meet the market’s demand for designers,” Paterson said. “It is clear that there is a steadily growing demand for all types of designers in Shanghai, and, indeed, throughout China. We are seeing that our graduates are required to be able to apply their skills in many different areas of design, which includes lingerie design.”
The first 15 bachelors of intimate apparel from the ACE Style Institute have not indicated where they intend to work after they graduate in 2007, said Yip, but “the China [intimates] market is growing really fast, and there is great potential in retailing as well as manufacturing. Several Chinese brands are very competitive. There is a cultural difference in terms of preferences for fabrics and colors, but the research so far is very superficial.”