First purely online school for fashion and design opens in Russia

Online education has come to Russia relatively recently, but not all sectors decided to go from offline training to online at once. Fashion and design was one of these industries, which went online just a couple of years ago.

Online courses for the tailoring and design of clothing and accessories have been around for a while but a fully-fledged academy that provides comprehensive education has not.

The program for the Academy of Fashion and Design on the education portal "SmotriUchis" (smotriuchis ru.) was developed with the support of its main partner - Fashion Consulting Group. The academy offers courses by industry experts including Anna Lebsak-Kleimans, co-founder of Fashion Consulting Group and Professor of the State University Higher School of Economics (HSE) and Marina Polkovnikova, owner of the agency VM - Consulting.

First full blown online academy for professionals

The courses were created for fashion industry professionals who want to improve their professional competence and to broaden their horizons, like start-up entrepreneurs in the field of fashion but are open to everyone interested in fashion.

The program consists of basic units, which are needed in order to work in the fashion and design industry: management, visual merchandising, fashion buying, style and colors, marketing, public relations and digital marketing, trend-forecasting and brand-management, history of fashion, law and e- commerce.

A student can buy the academy program as a whole, as well as separate units or courses. At the end of the Academy or unit, students receive a diploma.

“We have been engaged in education in the fashion industry for almost 20 years. And in fact, we were the first in Russia who offered business training programs in this area,” said Anna Lebsak-Kleimans. “We're noticing that the qualification requirements in the industry are increasing year by year. Today, all levels of professionals are living and working a busy schedule, while they continually need to update knowledge and technology.” Stylists require the knowledge of buyers, store managers need to know about visual merchandising or about the technology to assess the effectiveness of sales and so on. In order to save time and resources, many shift their work processes to the online space, said Lebsak-Kleimans. “Therefore, by offering them the possibility for professional development in a convenient way as online video lectures, we also try to optimize their working time.”

Story adapted into English by Weixin Zha.

Photos: Academy of Fashion and Design