IÉSEG’s Master in Fashion Management students discover the Yves Saint Laurent exhibition
05/24/2022
On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of Yves Saint Laurent’s first fashion show, six Parisian museums – the Centre Pompidou, the Museum of Modern Art, the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay, the Musée national Picasso-Paris and the Musée Yves Saint Laurent Paris – are retracing the career of the famous fashion designer by opening up their permanent collections to his clothes and sketches. This exhibition, supported by the Pierre Bergé – Yves Saint Laurent Foundation, allows visitors to discover pieces unknown to the public and rare documents. In addition to paying tribute to the talent of the designer, it also honors all those who contributed to the making of these pieces and the success of this prestigious fashion house.
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The participants of IÉSEG’s Master in Fashion Management had the privilege of going to this exhibition in order to deepen their knowledge of the luxury and fashion industry. Léa Voirin, a student from the Master’s program, says: “This tour was very interesting. What I particularly liked was to see the entire creative process behind the great couture pieces we know and not just the pieces as is often the case. The guide was passionate about what she was telling us, she managed to transmit her passion for Yves Saint Laurent. This visit allowed me to expand my knowledge of the house that I already knew well. Even though I had already seen Yves Saint Laurent’s studio, I still enjoy going back to see it because I find that it has a very special atmosphere.”
These exhibition visits, as well as meetings with great designers or the discovery of the backstage of the great Parisian fashion houses, are one of the major axes of the Master in Fashion Management, which educates students not only to the luxury professions, but also in a much broader way to the professions of fashion, cosmetics and jewelry, from ready-to-wear to tailor-made. Léa Voirin explains: “The exhibition completes our courses by bringing us a very concrete dimension and a completely different approach. In the Master’s program, the training remains very focused on the management part. This kind of opportunity allows us to have a new perspective, to complete the artistic and creative dimension of the sector that we find in the courses taken at the Instituto Marangoni. It’s interesting to have these two dimensions.”
Taught in Paris, the world capital of fashion, IÉSEG’s Master in Fashion Management is designed in collaboration with Istituto Marangoni, a prestigious fashion school founded in Milan in 1935. This Master’s program is one of the few in the world to offer both a cutting-edge education in management and in creation & design, combining the expertise and excellence of one of the best Business Schools and one of the best Fashion Schools in Europe.
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Throughout their studies, students in IÉSEG’s Master in Fashion Management explore all facets of the world of fashion and luxury to master all stages of production and sales, from trend analysis and product and material sourcing to supply chain and sales, including marketing, data, strategy, point of sale management and finance… These subjects are also complemented by courses in general knowledge and history of fashion, perfume, cosmetics and accessories (including exhibition visits) so that students have a solid knowledge of this sector, which they are passionate about, and have the hard skills as well as the soft skills that companies in this sector are specifically looking for.
Inès Jourde, academic director of the Master in Fashion Management of this class of 2022, adds: “This cutting-edge teaching, composed not only of theoretical courses, but also numerous applied courses (such as pattern making, design assembly…) and practical applications (creation of point-of-sale windows, casting for fashion shows, creation of fashion show scenographies for a house, taking into account its history, values and codes… ) is taught by professors recognized in their field and by professionals from companies such as Dior, Gucci, Chanel, MAC Cosmetics, Remy Cointreau, or Cerruti. At the end of their training, our students have mastered all the workings of this very special sector, from creation to sales, understand how each decision can impact the company’s business model, and are therefore ready to launch themselves with confidence on the international fashion and luxury scene.”
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Just like IÉSEG, the Master in Fashion Management attracts students from around the world. Among the 40 students in this year’s class, more than 20 different nationalities are represented… Students come from France, Italy, Spain, China, India, Japan, Canada, and more and more from African countries such as Nigeria. They are thus immersed in a multicultural environment and learn to work daily with people with different cultural codes, training them in the reality of the business world that they will have to deal with in their future professional lives.
“Thanks to this exhibition, I learned more about Yves Saint Laurent as a creator, it’s a different vision from the other exhibitions I’ve seen before because the latter focused more on his person as a figure. Here we learned more about how he actually worked, who worked with him, all the steps of the creative process, those hidden elements that we don’t necessarily suspect and that made the house of YSL the pillar of contemporary fashion that it is today. This visit, like the other visits and meetings we can have thanks to the Master, allows us to improve our ability to analyze the history and the different actors of the fashion industry. It will be an asset for our personal knowledge as well as for the application that can be made in our future projects. For a long time, I have wanted to work in the fashion industry, and more specifically to create my own design studio. At IÉSEG, I am lucky enough to be able to follow the Master in Entrepreneurship and Innovation in parallel with the Master in Fashion Management, so that I can quickly oversee both the management and the creative aspects of my studio. The Master in Fashion Management is a very good program because it provides us with all the knowledge and practical tools we will need throughout our professional career, through the content of the courses as well as the testimonies of the lecturers themselves, all professionals in their field,” concludes Adrien de Vigan, also a student of the Master in Fashion Management.