As they say, if loving shoes is a crime then I am looking at life without parole.
People carry clothes but shoes carry us, footwear designing can be extremely challenging, it is not the most popularly chosen field even among the fashion designers, but it doesn’t mean it does not have a good scope.
It is without a doubt a field which is not for anybody who pursues fashion designing and seeks footwear designing as specialisation, you need to have the real passion for it. You cannot do it just for the sake of it. The scope can be really high in this industry for the people who are actually interested and possess the required talent for it.
Achieving a successful career in this industry is indeed a difficult task to accomplish, but as long as you love the work and you are good at it, it’s a cakewalk. Now let us introduce to you some of the famous courses and the best colleges to pursue a successful career in footwear designing industry.
The eligibility for entry into any footwear design institute would be according to the course you opt for.
- For bachelors or diploma, at least high school graduation is necessary.
- For post-graduation, you must carry a bachelor’s degree in the respective field.
Institutes to learn footwear designing:
1. Footwear Design and Development Institute (FDDI)
It is one of the finest among all the design institutes specialising towards footwear. It focuses peculiarly towards footwear designing and leaves no table unturned for having students achieving success in this industry.
It has campuses all over the country including Noida, Hyderabad, Chennai, etc. It offers Bachelors in Design (B.Des), Bachelors in Business Administration (BBA), Masters in Design (M.Des), and Masters in Business Administration (MBA) courses in the field of footwear designing.
It is a government institute that provides admission on the basis of an entrance test called All India Selection Test (AIST) that gets conducted every year
2. National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT)
The most renowned and reputed institutes for fashion designing is the National Institute of Fashion Designing pertaining courses in design, technology, and management.
Emphasizing towards footwear designing it offers a Bachelors in Design (B.Des) course specialising in Leather Design that covers footwear designing along with other leather outfits too.
It also offers one year program and 6 months program in Footwear Design and Production Technology (FDPT) and Computer-Aided Design for Footwear (CAD-FW) both in the Chennai campus.
3. Central Footwear Training Institute, Chennai
Another premier institution for footwear designing is the Central Footwear Training Institute that is located in Chennai. Their courses range from
- Postgraduate higher diploma in footwear technology and management
- Certificate courses specialising in various programmes related to footwear design.
They also have specialised courses that do not focus on footwear design, it includes distinct and general courses for extra knowledge such as a specialised course for becoming a real estate agent, becoming a successful sales professional, etc.
5. Government Leather Institute, Agra
Another premier institute that offers specialised courses in footwear design is Government Leather Institute, Agra that is considered the best shoe industry of Asia. The admission to these courses requires an adequate score in the entrance exam that gets conducted by Joint Entrance Examination Council, Lucknow. It is approved by AICTE Delhi and has a high reputation for the best of placements in leather technology, management, and design.
The specialised courses offered by the institute are:
- Diploma in Footwear technology
- Diploma in Leather Technology
These are full 3-year diploma programs that are offered being categorized under 6 semesters following the curriculum formed by The Board of Technical Education Lucknow.
6. Government Polytechnic Mumbai
Government Polytechnic Mumbai is an autonomous institute of Government of Maharashtra that got established in 1960. Earlier it focused on engineering diplomas and programmes that use to offer a limited number of courses in very particular fields. But gradually they were observed to have broadened their scope towards Leather Goods and Footwear Technology.
It is a three-year diploma course, and in 2003, the government institute of Leather Technology emerged with the Government Polytechnic Mumbai after which specialisations in footwear was also acknowledged.
The career prospects under footwear designing, management, and technology unlock various fields to enter in and offer handsome salaries even for the freshers. Though it is not as successful and competitive as the fashion industry but due to less competition and availability of seats in reputed colleges, only a few talented individuals make it.
Career options available in footwear designing :
1.Footwear Designing
The foremost and obvious option for kick starting the career in the footwear industry is footwear designing. In this, they get involved with the designing of various kinds of footwear such as boots, heels, sandals, shoes, etc. People also tend to specialise in certain kinds of footwear designing.
2. Footwear Technologist
The other prospect shows footwear technologist that is responsible for assisting the technical manager with the fitting and approval of sample and prepare graded size charts, update product fit comments and sample feedback, providing appropriate instructions related to every individual product to the suppliers etc.
3. Trend Analyst
As the name suggests it involves the management of various upcoming, ongoing, and fading trends of footwear designs. According to those, the designer, and technician are supposed to form new products for sale. It is a continuous process which will never go out of trend.
4. Marketing Executive
Footwear not just shows the tendency to form new kinds of footwear or track trends of it. If you know the product you can sell it in a better way, any footwear brand would like to hire a marketing executive that possesses a basic knowledge of footwear formations and structure.
Now, these are not just it, there are various other prospects that can snatch you towards greater heights not just in the footwear industry but in any of the industry.
Footwear brands, sports companies, Footwear Manufacturing companies, stores, fashion houses and many other places offer jobs to people specialising in footwear design, technology or management. It has a very high scope just like other fields of fashion and the talented ones among these can reach the sky in a drop of a dime.
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