Impact of learning process in fashion students: link with industry, social media and websites

The Portuguese fashion industry (textile, apparel and footwear) shows an excellent economic performance in the last years. With own brands, own collections and own products, the quality, the innovation and international image of the Portuguese clothes, accessories and shoes is increasing year by year. University of Minho has the Bachelor in Fashion Design and Marketing (BFDM). The young students came from different schools and places, with different backgrounds and links with fashion issues. The fashion industry needs good professionals to design and marketing functions, but these skills have to be worked in the university. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other social media are opportunities that the companies want to grab to promote and sell their products to the new global consumer. The Bachelor in Fashion Design and Marketing applies time and resources to increase the use and knowledge in these new tools. But remains an important question: does it works? To answer this question was designed this investigation. It is a qualitative research and the methods were "focus group" and longitudinal analysis. During January and February a focus group with ten young students from BFDM first year participated in two sessions. After an individual analysis of three different fashion brands (with presence in websites, facebook and Instagram), according a matrix designed to the investigation, the researchers made a discussion with the group. The results are very interesting and they will be used to evaluate the changes in the skills of the future fashion designers, before and after the bachelor degree in Fashion Design and Marketing. But they are preliminary results. In the future, we are planning to compare the results with students in BFDM and other bachelor degrees (without any link with fashion issues or interests). The fashion industry is ready to get inside this new, global and social world. The skills of the new professionals need to be prepared to reply these new demands.This work is financed by FEDER funds through the Competitivity Factors Operational Program me - COMPETE and by national funds through FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology within the scope of the project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-00713