Fashion

Speed and flexibility are weapons in a brutally tough market.

Beckmans' fashion study programme has, ever since its launch in 1939, been not only Sweden's but northern Europe's leading and most prestigious school for advanced fashion design. Applicants come from all over Sweden and nowadays from our neighbouring countries as well. The competition is razor-sharp, and the levels of previous knowledge required are tremendous.

"Extensive previous skills of pattern design and needlework, amongst other things, are mandatory requirements here" says Lena Kvarnström, the fashion study programme's joint principal teacher, along with Marie-Louise Nordin and Gabriella Fischer. "Plus our special aptitude tests are so demanding that only the very best even bother to apply. And yet we still get around 150 applicants for our 14 places, almost all of whom have completed lengthy preparatory training courses. So simply being accepted for the fashion study programme is proof that you have both talent and other abilities. Beckmans is very definitely an elite college for fashion design and that's the way it has to be, because surviving in the fashion industry is very tough indeed. Only the very best prevail."

It's true to say that for the fashion programme, as for Beckmans' two other programmes, it is the breadth and the limitless artistic freedom that primarily separates Beckmans from other equivalent courses in Sweden and, in particular, internationally. And that breadth is especially important for the fashion students, because the Swedish fashion industry in its current form is both small and limited, so the students must be prepared to be flexible in their choice of work.

"There's such enormous creative energy in this school, constantly exploding in all directions, that all of the students pick up on."

"Far from all of our students become designers under their own labels of course," says Lena Kvarnström. "They are also employed as corporate designers, purchasing officers, coordinators, illustrators, stylists, fashion editors, costume designers, pattern designers and all sorts of other things. Our training has to prepare them for all these opportunities, and give them an orientation in all areas. We encourage our students to avoid choosing a specialisation too early, precisely because it's so important to keep every door open. And it's also usually impossible to predict who'll end up where. Time after time, we see examples of students who we thought would be out and out artisans who end up instead as design managers at the Åhléns department store - or vice versa. We never cease to be surprised. Most of them, of course, dream of becoming stars in their own right, but in reality, nine out of ten of our students will end up working in the mass market - not least at H&M, where well over half of the designers employed come from Beckmans."

Unlike comparable colleges in other, bigger countries, Beckmans does not offer specialised courses in ladies and menswear, haute couture, fashion illustration, knitwear or children's clothing, for example. What the students get instead is a basic creative schooling and the chance to try out different disciplines. And despite, or rather because of the breadth and general orientation of the training, Beckmans' fashion students hold their own very well in all international comparisons.

"We see this time after time when our students go on to Masters degree level studies at international colleges such as Saint Martins in London", says Marie-Louise Nordin. "Speed and flexibility are Beckmans' great strengths. Our College is much less hide-bound by traditions and hierarchies than most of the other European and American colleges. Our students learn to make the most of very little, which imbues them with a strong spirit of creativity and inventiveness. There's such enormous creative energy in this school, constantly exploding in all directions, that all of the students pick up on."

Courses

• Advertising & graphic design
• Product Design
• Fashion
• Evening Classes