Our sponsors help us to bring the program to life through generous donations of hardware, software and expertise that you’ll get to experience throughout your studies. Students in other programs such as Bachelor Fashion Design & Technology or MBA Fashion Management will have modules dedicated to learning about fashion technology – so nobody will miss out on the action!
Students, startups and industry collaborators will come together in this unique space, meaning that you will be part of a flourishing Foundry – Fashion Technology Innovation Lab ecosystem; pushing you to think about the future of fashion. Our mission is to pioneer fashion technology as a discipline in Paris and beyond.
Embedding entrepreneurship into learning
A Fashion Academic Institution with Entrepreneurship at its Heart
Over half of our courses are directly business-related – for example our MBA in Fashion Management that has dedicated modules in entrepreneurship – and in the others, we ensure that entrepreneurship is strongly featured. We also regularly add new, updated strands to our programs. An example is our Enterprise: Product & Innovation module that our second year Bachelor Fashion Marketing students undertake in collaboration with an industry partner who is the client.
The Enterprise: Product & Innovation module sees the students actively working with a live brief set by a fashion company. This allows them to learn the challenges faced in delivering a new concept, product or brand onto the market. The project kicks off with a day of brainstorming in groups with active feedback and guidance from the industry partner. Subsequently they work to develop a strategic proposal to satisfy the project requirements, and ultimately present it back to the client. With this module students consolidate their theoretical learning into a practical result using strategic thinking, creativity and technical knowledge to nurture entrepreneurial thinking.
Lecturers who know their Business
It is not only the invited guests who deeply understand entrepreneurship. Our lecturers all know what they are speaking of from direct involvement, too. This means that when they teach a module involving entrepreneurship, they have an abundance of personal experience to draw from. They can expand on the concepts being taught using this knowledge, answer questions in an in-depth manner and give any student individualized suggestions based on what they might do themselves in a business situation.
For example, here are two of our lecturers who can boast a wealth of practical business experience:
Dr. Diana Derval
Diana is a senior lecturer in anthropology and luxury. She teaches the Sensorial Marketing module to our MBA students as well as the Neuromarketing module in the MBA Fashion Technology course.
She is actively involved in the fashion world, being the founder of the market research firm Derval Research, which has advised many Fortune 500 companies including Sephora, Michelin, Sofitel, Philips and L’Oréal. Diana has an innate understanding of entrepreneurship, having written three books on the subjects of fashion, luxury brands and shopping behaviors. Her passion lies in turning fascinating neuroscientific breakthroughs into powerful business frameworks to identify, understand, and predict human traits, motivations and behavior.
Peter Jeun Ho Tsang
Peter is the founder and writer of our entire Fashion Technology program and its’ concomitant Fashion Tech Innovation Lab and Makerspace. He also lectures in our other undergraduate and postgraduate programs on the subjects of business, product development and innovation.
Peter has entrepreneurship in his bloodstream. He is the founder of the fashion technology studio Beyond Form, which works with innovative brands to advise on strategy, innovation deployment and product development. His own retail-cum-lab concept, “The Dandy Lab”, was nominated for several awards including ‘Best New Retail Concept’ WGSN Futures 2016 and was commended by Internet Retailing 2015 for ‘The Digital Store Award’. Peter also regularly speaks at conferences about the future of fashion and technology including: WGSN Futures, Decoded Fashion and RBTE.