Designs on the future

Beijing fashion school director Zora Belmejdoub Gerault says aim is to cultivate students' creative abilities. Provided to China Daily

A Moroccan who came to Beijing via Paris is helping turn out the next line of fashion designers

As Chinese independent fashion designers have burst on the scene in recent years, many have boasted about being educated overseas. In the fashion industry, having London, New York or Paris embossed on your CV no doubt makes you more marketable to potential employees, but it dawned on someone one day that in all of this there lay another marketing possibility: educating designers in the land of their birth. Thus, seven years ago the venerable French fashion design school Esmod Paris arrived in Beijing aiming to cash in on this idea, and some of the fruits of that work were on display late last month.

Fifty students had just graduated from Esmod Beijing, and they were busy preparing for that magic moment when they would show off their work of the previous three years.

One of the students was Zhu Anzhe, whose graduate work, a white, billowy mid-length embroidered dress with long sleeves, was on display with the work of her colleagues in Beijing Hotel.

Pulling the strings behind the scenes was Zora Belmejdoub Gerault, international director of Esmod Beijing.

Esmod, expecting that the Chinese fashion industry would expand rapidly and that more young people would want to learn about European fashion, had come to Beijing in 2005, Gerault says.

Esmod International Fashion University Group goes back to 1841, when Alexis Lavigne, a tailor, set up l'Ecole Superieure des Arts et Techniques de la Mode in Paris, which the company says was the world's first fashion school.

There would be few who design or make clothes who would not have had something to do with Lavigne, for it was he, Esmod claims, who invented the flexible measuring tape.

These days Esmod boasts 24 schools in 12 countries, including France, Germany, Norway, Russia, Turkey, Lebanon, Brazil, China and Japan.

When the Beijing school opened seven years ago it had 60 students, and now it has 250, Gerault says. Its main courses are fashion design and pattern making, and a year's study there costs 92,000 yuan ($14,700; 11,500 euros).

Befitting the company's international scope, Gerault, a Moroccan, had set up Esmod schools in Casablanca and Rabat before coming to China to take charge of the Beijing school.

Gerault, 57, who mainly works on the management side these days, seldom teaching, says she gained a wealth of experience as a fashion design teacher in Paris and Morocco.

In Paris, apart from teaching, she was a fashion design adviser for the upmarket department store Galeries Lafayette.

No sooner had Gerault arrived in Beijing than she realized the difficulty of the task before her.

"At first, it was difficult for students to understand teachers from France, and the quality of the lectures was affected by the language."

She decided that each teacher, of whom there are now more than 10, needed a Chinese-speaking assistant to help with communication, and things greatly improved, she says.

The teachers are appointed by Esmod in Paris, and all the assistants are graduates of that school, she says.

But Gerault discovered that linguistic difficulties were relatively trifling compared with another challenge that defies an easy fix: cultural differences.

"Chinese students are weaker in creating things compared with the students in Paris," Gerault says.

The solution lies in reproducing France's style of education in China by cultivating students' creative abilities, she says, rather than by imposing the school's will.

"We teach them how to do research, how to imagine things and how to open their minds."

At the beginning it was very difficult to get the Chinese students to break out and create by themselves, she says. She cites an exercise involving a sports shoe.

"We show the student a small part of the shoe, and ask them to make a skirt."

But through a process of experiencing success and failure, of what is good and bad, students have begun to open up and be more creative. This learning process is not one-sided, she says.

"We come from Europe, but we are now in China. I cannot change my students, but just try my best to adapt to them."

Part of that adaptation includes the approach to discipline.

"In France if a student does not work hard and hands homework in late, I deduct a mark and criticize them," she says.

In China she asks teachers not to punish students but always to encourage them.

"When a Chinese student submits work in time or ahead of time, we add a point to the final score. They look forward to getting praise and then do better and better."

However, the most important prerequisite to learning is passion, she says.

When China Daily visited a classroom recently, 20 students, all aged about 20, were busy at their desks drawing a shirt pattern on white paper. It was a lesson about colors, said the teacher, Aurelien Lecour.

"Today we're learning how to make different types of colors," Lecour said. "There are many types of colors, formal ones, casual ones, straight expression, etc. There are also many cultures about colors from different countries."

The lecture would last seven hours, and the class runs until next July.

Lecour, who has more than 10 years' experience in pattern making and fashion marketing, said the work is arduous, but he does not mind being tired because producing good work demands time.

"I think my students are motivated. They know their ideal, and they are making an effort to achieve their goals."

Gerault draws on her experience with Galeries Lafayette in her work at Esmod.

When she worked for the department store, she advised rich people how to mix and match and how to make themselves look more stylish.

"I can also use my experience in the market in my education career. I think connecting society with teaching makes the classes more interesting."

As head of the Beijing school, her role is to ensure that students and teachers are happy, and to act as a kind of ambassador, dealing with the media and any organization keen to work with the school.

yaojing@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 11/23/2012 page29)