Discover Fashion Enterprise

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Hi everyone. I'm Dr. Stephen Wigley from the School of Fashion and Textiles at RMIT University. I'm really excited to welcome you to our presentation today to focus on fashion enterprise, but also I hope to tell you a little bit more about the School of Fashion and Textiles and what we do, and how we can prepare you for an amazing career in this really exciting, really contemporary, and really rewarding industry.

So Wominjeka, welcome to RMIT University. RMIT acknowledges the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of Eastern Kulin nations on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the University. RMIT University respectfully acknowledges their ancestors and elders, past and present. RMIT also acknowledges the traditional custodians and their ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia where we conduct our business. As I said in the introduction, the Bachelor of Fashion (Enterprise) program is a really exciting program. It's brand new. It's very much been designed with the contemporary and current needs of the fashion and textiles industry in mind, and embraces a lot of the challenges, a lot of the innovations, and a lot of the technologies, which are really important to the fashion and textiles industry. It's your chance if you study with us, to really shape the future of fashion.

Bachelor of Fashion (Enterprise) is all about examining the environmental, ethical, corporate, and consumer dimensions of the global fashion and textiles industry. It's really your chance to focus on the kind of behind the scenes aspects of the fashion industry. You could specialize in fashion product management, in fashion marketing, or in fashion retail management. And what you'll be gaining by studying the Bachelor of Fashion (Enterprise) is the opportunity to really understand how the business of fashion actually works, understanding how, when, why consumers buy fashion products. How do we develop new products that really meet consumers needs? And especially in these changing and challenging times, how can businesses adapt what they offer to their customers in order to thrive into the future?

The School of Fashion and Textiles at RMIT university is recognized by the business of fashion as being one of the top 10 global fashion schools within the entire world. We are the number one design university in the Asia Pacific region and number 11 in the world. So you will be joining a truly world-class university and a truly world-class school where you're really in the best place to literally shape your own future, but also shape the future of fashion.

As you can see from this program structure diagram, you'll be learning a whole number of different topics and courses and subjects within the Bachelor of Fashion (Enterprise) program. As I said before, it's your opportunity to really shape and direct your own future and your own career focused on either fashion product management, fashion marketing, or fashion retail management. So in semester 1, you're given quite a broad based introduction to all of those topics. And then from semester 2 onwards, you have the opportunity to choose program electives that let you specialize in those product management, marketing, or retail specializations.

A really important and unique aspect of what we offer in the School of Fashion and Textiles at RMIT University is the opportunity for our students on all of our bachelor programs to not just specialize in their chosen discipline, but to enjoy a minor in another fashion and textiles discipline. So for instance, you could major in fashion enterprise by choosing school minor option courses. You can actually have a minor in fashion design, in textile design, or fashion and textile (sustainable innovation). And equally, if you choose to study fashion design or textile design or fashion and textile sustainability, or alternatively, if you choose to study fashion design, textile design, or fashion and textiles (sustainable innovation) as your major program, you can choose a minor in any of the other school minors that we offer.

So this opportunity to major in your chosen specialization, but to develop a minor option within other disciplines makes you, not just a much more well rounded fashion and textiles professional, but also much more employable. If you wanted to specialize in fashion marketing, for instance, you could study the Bachelor of Fashion (Enterprise), but what makes a really good marketing professional especially in the fashion industry is not just understanding the business dynamics of marketing, it's also understanding how fashion works, how design works, how products or designs or alternatively, how new technologies can influence new fashion products. So you could major in the Bachelor of Fashion (Enterprise), but minor within fashion design or fashion and textiles (sustainable innovation), really builds your portfolio skills and makes you a really employable professional for the future.

These are the entry requirements for the Bachelor of Fashion (Enterprise) program. As you can see, there's a little bit of information there that I won't read out, but we are looking for a broad range of people within this program. So we're really interested to hear from you if you studied either fashion or arts and design in the past, or if you're interested in business, or even if your background comes from any number of different areas. We don't require for this program our students to have studied fashion in the past. We're really looking for a variety of people within the program. And that literally means a variety of people in terms of their backgrounds, but also a variety of people in terms of where they're from, their countries of origin.

To apply, the ATAR score is there and the prerequisites are there. We don't have a really demanding selection task because this is, as I said, a very kind of broadly appealing program, but we do ask for our applicants to submit a personal statement outlining, why is it that you want to study fashion enterprise? What are your aspirations for the future? What your strengths and weaknesses? And do you have any kind of background experience within fashion and textiles or retail or marketing or any other things that you've been up to? That really defines for us who you are and sets the standard for how you're going to study with us on the program. So really welcoming applicants from pretty much everywhere in terms of what you studied in the past and where you're from.

When you do join us on the program, what we offer on our campus in Brunswick is a really modern campus that's really perfectly equipped to give you the best possible learning environment. There's a huge range of spaces for you to study in. There's an amazing library there, but we've also got amazing classrooms integrating the latest technology and integrating different things that you can do. So beyond sitting in a classroom or sitting in a lecture, you could also be perhaps working in a lab testing fibers. You could perhaps be actually working alongside some of the design students in their studios. We've got a really amazing and recently refurbished campus in Brunswick, which will be the hub for your learning with us on the program. Recently, we invested over $8 million in our fashion hub to make it a truly world class facility, which boasts multiple areas, multiple study spaces, and multiple technologies for you to work with, so a really exciting place for you to study.

The Bachelor of Fashion (Enterprise) program is brand new. And because of that, we don't have a really defined sense of who our students are in terms of their profile. The person we're looking at here is one of our Master's of Fashion Entrepreneurship students, recent graduate in fact, and she really acts as someone who represents pretty much all of our students within the Bachelor of Fashion (Enterprise) and Master of Fashion Entrepreneurship programs. So she's a very dynamic person. She's really excited by the fashion industry. She's a creative person, but also she's interested in the problems around the fashion and textiles industry. She's driven, not just about the kind of exciting creativity and the dynamism of the industry, she's excited also by finding solutions to problems like sustainability within the industry, problems like how to make sure that the industry becomes more environmentally friendly in the future and how to integrate emerging technologies.

So Meher is someone who really represents all of our students within the fashion enterprise area. She's excited by creativity of the fashion industry. She's excited by the opportunities to solve problems such as sustainability in the industry. And she's also really excited and activated in terms of capturing the opportunities to be creating businesses, which are placing not just fashion at their core, but also innovation in terms of technology and business models. And that really is what the future of fashion is all about. It is yes, about beautiful designs, but also it's about business models. It's about sustainability and it's about applying technology to that industry, and Meher is someone who understands that and is grasping that opportunity and making her future happen. She's shaping the future of fashion. If you're someone who has that same kind of sense of being interested in fashion, who has that same sense of being really excited by the dynamism and the creativity of the fashion and textiles industry, but also you want to bring in that commercial aspect or that technology aspect, then fashion enterprise is possibly the program for you.

Within the School of Fashion and Textiles at RMIT, we have a huge number of connections with industry. We are really proud of the relationships that we have with industry, not just within the fashion and textiles area, but in a broad spectrum of associated areas so in the media industry, technologies, distribution. So what that means for you as a student is the opportunity to learn from your lectures as you study, but also to really learn and understand how is the industry actually happening to learn from those people who are driving the fashion and textiles industry in Australia and around the world forward.

You'll be able to work with our industry partners, work on real life projects with real clients. You can take part in global opportunities for work placements and internships. You'll be able to answer different projects. You'll be able to enter different competitions, bringing your work to the eyes of the world. Lots different field trips. We have lots of different activities going on alongside simply studying your program. We are, as you can see from the stats there, one of the top universities not just in Australia, but in the world for our industry connections and the benefit that that accrues to our students.

So, as I said, we have a huge range of different partners who we work with on a regular basis. And just some of the big name brands here on this slide, I think, illustrate that in terms of very well known, very high profile fashion brands, but also some of the organizations which we might not classically associate with the fashion and textiles industry. And really, the five brands and five businesses named here are just a very small microcosm of the broader diversity of businesses, large and small, some very locally based here in Melbourne, some based in Vietnam, some base anywhere around the world that we partner with and we work with to give our students that best possible exposure to industry and what's going on out there in the industry.

A few different examples of industry projects that we've worked with over the past few years. As I said, we do engage very much with the fashion industry, so on the right hand side of your screen there, there's an image there, which is based around a speed networking session that we had with Julie Stevanja, who's the founder and CEO of Stylerunner, and that happened at the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival. Every year when it runs, we've taken our students there and give them the opportunity to learn from best practice in the fashion and textiles industry.

Lots of other projects that we've run with industry partners over the past few years. So for example, some time ago, we worked with a business called Radical Yes, which specializes in flat soled shoes for women, a very successful Melbourne boutique shoe business based locally. And what we had our students do with them was develop and design and build a marketing campaign for them. Another example on a more kind of global scale would be our project with Inditex whereby our students were looking at the sustainability of the footwear part of the Inditex business and thinking about how can that be made more sustainable, reducing waste, and making it also commercially viable for Inditex's customers around the world.

So just three examples of the opportunities that our students have had to work with industry and to do really exciting projects that are very much focused on giving them that real world experience to take out to their careers. We also have a huge range of global opportunities. So RMIT, as you can see, has relationships and partnerships with 215 universities around the world. And they are literally spread very geographically evenly around the world, from Asia, Europe, Africa, South America, and North America. So studying with us on any of our programs gives you the opportunity to possibly partner with those universities and maybe spend a semester in Europe or North America or wherever it is that you want to go. So really exciting global opportunity, really capturing that sense of the global dynamism of the fashion and textiles industry.

So in the Bachelor of Fashion (Enterprise) program, we have a huge number of career opportunities and career outcomes for our graduates of the future. Some of those are really exciting in terms of working on the business side of the fashion industry, perhaps in retail management or in digital marketing, for example, but also some are tipping on to the technology aspects or the CSR aspects of the fashion and textiles industry. So a good example of that would be the emergence of sustainability management as being a big issue and a big professional area within the fashion and textiles industry.

All of our programs in the School of Fashion and Textiles have the UN sustainability goals embedded within them. So what that means is that all of our graduates are really well-equipped to grasp those sustainability issues and to apply that to their own career. So someone on the Bachelor of Fashion (Enterprise) program, for instance, they're going to be for example, a really amazing fashion product manager, but they'll also have a really good understanding of how to make those products and distribute those products in a sustainable way. So they'll have career options that open to them, not just within the product management area, but also within other areas such as sustainability management or they'll have a really good grasp of how technology applies within the fashion and textiles industry.

So again, what we're trying to do is to give our students and to give our graduates the best possible chance to have a really exciting, really rewarding career opening up as many opportunities to them in terms of the job opportunities, the professional areas that they will have as they progress. So amazing career outcomes for our graduates.

So a couple of important dates for the year ahead. So as you can see, we will be starting our semester in 2021 with a really good orientation program that runs from the 22nd to the 26th of February, 2021. We'll begin teaching properly on the 1st of March and your last day to enroll with us would be the 8th of March. So I really would encourage you if you are interested in the Bachelor of Fashion (Enterprise) program or any of our programs, RMIT University, to really engage with us, connect with us. You can visit our "Study with us" page on the RMIT website. These are the key dates, but please do be in touch with us if you need any more information about applying for any of our programs.

So thanks everyone. Thanks for taking time out to watch the video. It's really been my pleasure to tell you more about our fashion enterprise program and about the broader School of Fashion and Textiles here at RMIT University. If you are interested in studying with us, then please do visit our "Study with us" page on the RMIT website. And it's been my pleasure to welcome you on a virtual basis to RMIT, tell you more about our programs, and we're really looking forward to welcoming you onto campus soon to have what's going to be the next steps in an amazing program of study for you and what's going to be ultimately a really rewarding career in the fashion and textiles industry. Take care, everyone. Thanks and bye.

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