As some our readers may know, IFA Paris has been pushing the tech and innovation agenda for the past 18 months. Starting with the launch of our fashion tech lab in 2019, secondly a Startup Program for fashion tech founders in 2020, and this year in January 2021 we finally launched our MBA Fashion technology program. All of this activity combined is paving the way for a generation of changemakers equipped to solve fashion’s challenges by using tech.

You may ask, what is an MBA in Fashion Technology exactly? This is no ordinary MBA. The program combines business, tech and fashion theoretical lessons with practical skills development. Therefore, our students not only learn how to manage tech product development, but also have to build the tech solution itself. This means that the students have to learn how to create computer code from day 1. They’re currently doing this with our computer engineering expert, Vincent Thiberville, who has previously built software and hardware solutions. Prêt à Pousser ring a bell? Elsewhere in the program, entrepreneurship is a key focus since this is how many great innovations come to life. Our resident serial entrepreneur and financial expert, Pierre Leroy, has been taking the students through a startup journey to push ideas right from the start.

If this wasn’t enough, our inaugural cohort is already experiencing beyond academia via industrial collaborations with Gravity Partners and Lablaco that kicked off in term 1. The projects see the students developing use cases for augmented reality tools and developing digital fashion pieces. Readers will have to check back later on in the year to see the fruits of their labour. Specifically, their digital garments will be sold on Lablaco’s SPIN platform at the next Circular Fashion Summit in October 2021. Program director, Peter Jeun Ho Tsang, has a vision that within the next few years, learning fashion tech will be the norm and rolled out globally.

For more information about this program, please visit: MBA Fashion Technology.