Union Minister Piyush Goyal shared that the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT), the premier institute of fashion education in the country, should endeavour to work on the larger vision of helping the weavers and artisans of the country by boosting their income.
It was while reviewing consultancy and developmental projects that are being implemented by NIFT that the Minister for Textiles and Commerce and Industry shared that the National Sizing Survey of India and the VisioNxt-Trend Insight & Forecasting Lab will help in providing a huge impetus to the apparel exports of the country. He requested NIFT to fastrack projects so that the outcomes reach the public as well as industries sooner rather than later, a report in PTI stated.
"Talking about the new possibilities opened in the post-COVID-19 world, the minister asked NIFT to come up with initiatives to introduce hybrid courses, short-term and skill development courses to expand its reach," mentioned an official statement, as quoted in a report by PTI.
The union minister mentioned and even appreciated the craft cluster initiative. Under this, NIFT students take up projects along with grassroot-level artisans. He also suggested that each NIFT student should see if they could adopt an artisan as this would help in the diversification of their products and the quality and processes will improve too.
Setting the size
For now, INDIAsize is the National Sizing Survey that NIFT is undertaking so that it could address the inconsistencies when it comes to apparel sizing systems and fits. As a part of this pan-India project, anthropometric data is already being gathered using 3D whole-body scanners from those who are above 15 years of age.
What this project aims at doing is creating a database of body measurements that truly and aptly represents the Indian population and, in turn, help in creating a size identification number for any customer via mapping, categorisation and defining of the shape of their body. Thus, the standardised body size chart will be helpful for manufacturers to come up with goods for a certain target customer and also help customers identify the size that will fit them best.
Intelligence enabled
VisioNxt-Trend Insight & Forecasting Lab is India's first artificial intelligence (AI) and emotional intelligence-enabled fashion trends insights and forecasting initiative that will target to identify, map and analyse geo-specific trends which will help in addressing India's plurality.
Furthermore, via yet another project, the focus is to create a national knowledge portal that will be in the form of an integrated system. It will develop a framework to weave the 'then' (past) and 'now' (future) of crafts, clothing and textiles centered around developments that are futuristic in nature. It will help with the aggregation of data and repositories, including that of the Ministry of Textiles and its subordinate offices.
The textile ministry, in a statement, mentioned that collaborations with other ministries, institutions, select collections in museums, galleries and private collections are also envisaged.