- FashionUnited |
Hans de Foer, former designer for names as Azzedine Alaïa and Jean-Paul Gaultier and recent new director of the Fashion Design Programme at IFM was interviewed by Cuir a Paris about the new course.
You recently took up your position as Director of the Postgraduate Design Programme at the IFM. Can you tell us more about your career in fashion?
I graduated from the Academie Royale des Beaux Arts in Anvers, Belgium and have worked as a tutor at the IFM since 2003. Prior to that I worked as a designer and stylist for couture houses such as Jean-Paul Gaultier, Azzedine Alaïa, Jean-Charles de Castelbajac and Courrèges. I have also had my own line of clothes and was style director for many ready-to-wear diffusion labels. These two roles, as a designer (for my own label) and stylist (for other labels), caught the eye of Francine Pairon who launched the Postgraduate Design Programme at the IFM in 2000.
Could you tell us about the content and the spirit of this programme?
The Postgraduate programme lasts for one year and is followed by a 6-month internship. It offers very professional training, allowing designers to work under realistic conditions with leading players from the industry, in direct contact with French companies and labels, on real projects that have been launched and produced by our long-term partners. It is an intensive and demanding double Major programme, one in Clothing and the other in Accessories, to which we will add a third major in Image Design from September 2013, in response to a growing demand from the sector.
Leather has a prime role to play in the accessories sector, how do you address this in the projects of the designers?
Throughout the course, our designers are accompanied and trained by a team of professionals who consider it their duty to pass on their knowledge. As we do not have any in-house staff, they represent a direct and precious link to the profession. Their know-how is based on their experience in their everyday work. They include professionals from the leather sector, who guide our designers in their exploration of the accessories sector, the world of leather and its particularities.
The IFM has chosen to exhibit the creations of its designers at LE CUIR A PARIS for more than 10 years now, what are the perspectives offered by this partnership?
It is a precious partnership for the Institute and we are very grateful for it. It allows us to exhibit the fruits of our many partnerships, to showcase our partners, their expertise and their generosity. It allows us to communicate, to consolidate our contacts with the sector and to meet other partners.
With your dual profile of both designer and stylist, what advice would you give to a designer who wants to get started?
Go for it !
Source: Cuir a Paris