Loes Julicher, alumna of the EUR Fashion Industry Minor and events manager of student association the New Fashion Society had the honor to interview Susanne Vegter, founder and director of STUDIOVEGTER. STUDIOVEGTER is a fashion and design recruitment and intermediation agency focussed on connecting professionals, companies, and educational institutes in fashion and design industries. For over a decade, founder Susanne Vegter has a track record of matching the right fashion professionals with the right companies. Her experience as a fashion designer for various brands and retailers adds to her skills as a connector in creative industries. The STUDIOVEGTER network extends across sectors like design, fashion, interiors and lifestyle, from international fashion & business experts to up and coming talent from design academies and universities. Vegter provides a highly personal, specialized recruitment service for ambitious talent and fashion companies. Vegter also advises various academies and universities to reduce the gap between education and the workfield. In this interview you can read everything about Vegter’s findings concerning the needs of fashion stakeholders and the contribution of students who participated in the re-frame fashion project that could meet these needs.
What are the current needs of stakeholders within the fashion industry?
“Employers are looking for employees experienced with e-commerce and data analytics. Over the years, retail changed completely from offline retail stores to online webshops and platforms. With this, communication and e-commerce have become very important. It is necessary to be aware of how you can reach your customer online and who is your customer in general. With this, also the back office has become crucial. These employees have nothing to do with design and creation, but focus on ICT and connect all the different departments. Next to that, also the strategy of the supply chain department changed. Over the last couple of years, supply chain managers stressed the importance of fast circulation within the chain by outsourcing the production of clothing. However, with this emphasis, legal expertise is needed and the industry is confronted with international legislation.
During this time, new jobs are introduced, but at the same time there is a need for an agile working method in which people are not working for one department but rather need to apply a holistic approach. In the last 10 years, a lot has changed in the fashion industry. Fixed norms and values that were the standards for graduates 10 years ago, are outdated nowadays. Think of for example offline retail stores that are replaced by online webshops. Also, issues concerning sustainability changed and disrupted the whole industry. It is remarkable that fashion companies first functioned as departments with verticale pillars such as design, finance, visual merchandise, business analysts and so on. In the last couple of years companies are trying to work with a more flexible organisation structure instead of a hierarchical one. The fashion industry became aware of the fact that the whole ecosystem needs to change. New legislation issues, new sourcing methods, new production methods arise, all focussed on the future. To deal with these changes the whole structure of a company needs to change. A lot of different stakeholders from different departments are involved with this change. Companies scream for change management in which not just one manager is directed to change the strategy of a company, but all employees from different vertical pillars are asked to work together, release their own pillar and be flexible in order to evoke crossovers. With this, agile working is emphasized. In general, people that are flexible, team players and have empathic abilities are needed for change management. In particular, soft skills which can be trained by the right educational programmes, are becoming more and more important for businesses to eventually generate the desired change.”
How can students, who participated in the Re-Frame Fashion Project, deliver a valuable contribution to the needs of fashion stakeholders?
“These students can deliver a very important contribution to the trajectory of change management. During these times it is important to talk with employees of companies and discuss what keeps them busy in the company itself. There is a need for research to map out the whole fashion industry. Within the fashion industry, creativity plays an important role and is often influenced by gut feeling. However, with the current radical changes within the field, more attention for research and knowledge about the whole industry is needed. Re-Frame Fashion students could be the ones who map out the needs of the industry and make connections between disciplines. They could be the ones who will uncover certain gaps and show the new professions that are desired. In general, these students are able to ask the right questions at the right moment, and connect the dots to eventually form a logical and coherent story. For this, creative, analytical and academic skills are very important.
Also Re-Frame Fashion students could become the intermediary between creatives, such as designers, and business managers. Especially in these times, the different stakeholders need to collaborate. Re-Frame Fashion students will learn to analyse how these people cooperate within the field, but also how students and graduates can generate changes and opportunities within the scene. Instead of following the rules set by the industry, these creatives need to come up with new ideas, generate change and act as avant-gardists. With the help of analytical skills, Re-Frame Fashion students will learn to reveal how these creatives can generate changes within the industry.”
What is your opinion about possibly developing an International Master in Fashion Industry (IMFI)?
“Lately, a lot is changing in the fashion industry. I believe the focus on sustainability, entrepreneurship and heritage are informed choices. In general, these three subjects are very broad and connect a lot of different disciplines. For example, sustainability includes technology and innovation, heritage covers craftsmanship and entrepreneurship embraces change management and organizational sciences. It is essential to learn about heritage. The fashion industry acts as an ecosystem. Before we can concentrate on the future we need to learn from the past. Take for example craftsmanship. Nowadays, fashion companies are focussing more and more on fashion, innovation, technology and sustainability. Within companies, specialists with knowledge about craftsmanship are often missing. While companies are changing their strategies to become more sustainable, they would like to collaborate with smaller initiatives which possessed certain skills connected to their own heritage. Generally, we do not need more of these initiatives, it is necessary that these already existing initiatives collaborate with large-scale enterprises to change the system from within.
With this master programme, students will get the opportunity to take initiative and open new doors. Eventually students will lead their own way to what they want to learn in preparation of the workfield.”