National Institute of Fashion Technology, Patna, students take part in an installation display competition on the institute premises on Wednesday. Picture by Jai Prakash

Patna, Feb. 8: Students of National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) today came out of the drudgery of the classrooms and tried their hands on practical learning.

For the students, it was virtually a festival as they celebrated the first day of the three-day annual function, The Fashion Spectrum, on the institute premises at Udyog Bhavan in the state capital.

Kislay Kashyap, the assistant professor and the event media co-ordinator of NIFT, told The Telegraph: “The annual function is celebrated every year at all NIFT centres. The purpose of organising the function is to provide a platform to the budding designers before they step out on to the real world. The annual function helps them to brush up their talents and showcase their creativity to the people. Once that is done, their confidence receives a big boost. After all, practice makes a man perfect.”

He added: “The best part of the function is that it is the students who organise everything. The faculty hardly has any work to do. The students take the initiatives. We follow this practice because if the students are asked to organise an event in future, they would not face any difficulties.”

He pointed out that as designers, each student would be required to organise events sooner or later.

Today, the students of fashion designing department gathered in groups to participate in events such as debates, dumb charades, advertising and installation art.

The topics for the debate were Luxury Retail in India — Reality or Mirage, Censorship of Media — Necessity for Indian Audience and Resurgent Bihar — Hype or Reality. Five groups of three students each participated in the debate.

Shreya Yadav, a fourth semester fashion designing student, who spoke on Luxury retail in India, said: “I chose the topic because I feel as a fashion designing student, I need to know about the retail sector in India. It would help me understand and analyse the market better. It would also help me design my product in a better way. I am for the topic.”

The advertisement event, Ad-mad, was on creative advertising. The students were given a topic related to the fashion trends and were asked to come up with creative advertisements.

Kashyap pointed out that the event threw light on the creative aspects of the students. “Creativity is an important facet of students of fashion designing. Ad-mad is a creative competition. The more creative you are, chances of being a successful designer are more.

The final event of the day was installation art, where students were given two topics, Born Wild and Biharodaya. For the topic Born Wild, the students were asked to make a design on the importance of conserving wildlife and the natural resources. They used waste materials to come up with their designs.

Shreya Dutta, a fourth semester student, told The Telegraph: “I am making this wired-looking tree structure with broken CDs and wires. The structure does not have a particular structure because my topic itself is born wild.”

The students who chose to talk on Biharodaya were asked to highlight various ways in which the state has been developing in the field of fashion.

Over 200 NIFT students from various semesters took part in the events organised on the first day of the programme.

Over the next two days, cultural performances and fashion shows would be held on the institute premises. The fashion show would be the final event before the programme draws to a close on February 10.