New book details how to become a fashion educator

When you’re an educator standing in front of a class of expectant upturned faces for the first time, it’s often a nerve-wracking case of sink or swim. Being a fashion educator has only become more challenging post-pandemic and despite the importance of the work, there exists minimal guidance material for anyone considering a transition from industry to academia and few systems or tools to support academics and researchers already working in the field.

FashionUnited spoke to Frederica Brooksworth, lecturer at London College of Fashion and program leader of Fashion Management at Hult International Business School, who in response to the absence she noticed on the market of pertinent resource material, authored her own book “How to Become a Fashion Academic,” published in April.

When did you first realize there was a need for a book such as “How to Become a Fashion Academic”?

It was born out of frustration, really. I’m someone who is quite methodical and I really like systems. But for me, becoming a fashion academic, which I always knew I wanted to do, was a struggle. I searched for books, blog posts, articles online on how to do it the right way, and there was nothing. There were articles on how to become a professor or academic, but I think what people fail to recognize is that the discipline of fashion academia works very differently than teaching business or management or marketing or law. I made many mistakes, but I was quite fortunate to have had people who helped me and provided guidance, and over time, I began to think I have to share this information.

Also, 10 years ago, I was one of the very few black fashion academics in the UK. I think it's very different in the States, but there are very few in Europe, and when I got started, most people of color were on part time contracts, adjunct professors, technicians and so forth. People would ask me how to get contracts, or if they needed to do a masters. Eventually I knew I needed to write something.

Schools have traditionally welcomed educators who continue to work in an industry position, but those educators don't usually have qualifications to teach, and the skills needed in the classroom are different than those required in industry. Does your book help fill that gap?

That's actually one of the chapters in the book. Let's say you’re someone who has been a marketer for luxury brands, and have worked for the likes of Chanel and Dior. You can have your experience hat on, but you need to be able to understand how your experience translates into a language that students will understand. You have to think about how to break down your experience across different year groups and over different semesters, or into a syllabus for a 12 week program. How do the logistics work? You have to start thinking about frameworks. You're not going in and immediately speaking about the BCG Matrix, or PESTLE analysis. In a classroom setting, you need to bring theoretical frameworks to support your knowledge and even know what books would back up that knowledge.

Do you tackle the issue of grading, which can be an academic minefield and is far removed from industry day-to-day practices?

It’s a tricky thing for many people in industry who will have a standard that will be very different to the standard you will see within a classroom setting. Having an interest in fashion is completely different to knowing fashion, and everyone sees fashion differently and experiences it in a unique way. So as someone who's from industry, you need to be able to translate your experience into a language that not only students understand but that also works for the institution you're working in, breaking it down for a beginner, from year one to year two, and then final year, and then post- grad.

Do you think there'll ever be a time when grading will be banished?

We just need to change the way we essentially validate people's work, especially now with AI. Should we still be writing reports in this day and age? For me, there would be an element of written work, but you need to have students present in front of you. Because then they have to ensure that they've actually done the research and can come across as convincing. And that also applies to design.

There’s a cap on how many people you can give an A to in a program, which I think is just wrong, because these things have an impact on people's lives. However when students receive a low grade, many of those students will still be convinced their work merited a higher grade. In that case, it's more about changing the way we give feedback and maybe the rubric too. Feedback needs to be very constructive, and given from a viewpoint where we are training students to be able to design for consumers and industry, for the store or for the runway, but not from a classroom perspective.

Do you address social justice which, post-pandemic and after the murder of George Floyd, has entered the classroom in a way that it never did before?

The one thing to avoid is getting involved in politics because it can be quite sensitive. But you need to be mindful, even understand, the different backgrounds of students when it comes to your curriculum and how you're delivering it. You need to also ensure a diverse perspective when teaching and focus on decentralizing the curriculum. But it's not enough to talk about it in just a paragraph, because people won't truly understand the context, which is why I don’t feature it in the book.

It's really important to be able to take people through the entire chain of it, as opposed to just touching upon it. Fellow academic, Ben Barry, [dean of Fashion at Parsons School of Design] really breaks it down in a very important way, and he doesn't look at it from a perspective of just race, but also disability, gender and so forth. One area I think doesn’t get enough attention is dyslexia, and a large number of creatives are dyslexic, so why have we still not catered our curriculum to make it easier for people dealing with this unseen disability?

Does your work teaching in London College of Fashion or as the executive director of the Council for International African Fashion Education feed its way into the book?

My experience being a lecturer has been the reason for the book. I’ve been fortunate to have taught at many prominent universities and pretty much everything happens the same way, when it comes to grading, the classroom process, even just how to conduct yourself in front of students. But I think if you've had 20 years of experience teaching at one institution, you can be a bit biased, because you only have that one perspective. I've also taught at American universities in the UK that follow the American standard and have American students, so I understand the curriculum and structure of education in North America, which is different to that of Europe and the UK. I speak about that in my book. For instance, people don't necessarily really understand that “adjunct” professor is in line with a visiting lecturer in the UK; or what it means if you’re getting paid 1,000 dollars per 100 credits.

I also saw a gap when talking about education and research around Africa, how the continent has always been left out. And the reason is because there aren't systems in place, nothing that's formalized when it comes to education. Now people are aware of what's happening on the continent because, for three years, we’ve been running programs, collaborated with Bloomsbury, and been focused on getting African fashion into the curriculum in schools in North America and Europe. So it's essentially creating these new systems and tools to really support academics decentralizing the curriculum.

With rising tuition and decreasing enrollment, some compare fashion education to a bubble about to burst, but what are your thoughts on the future of fashion education?

Number one, we need to stop this mass influx of applications every year. I don't understand why a course has 200 students on it. You have to understand that’s not sustainable. If we are doing this across 10s of 1000s of programs around the world, we are the ones contributing to the problem. It's us. We have too many students going into the system, and we’re producing too many graduates each year. When they come out they can't find jobs and people start to recognize that there's no value in working in this space, the pay isn't great, and we have this whole system of using free labor, internships and so forth. The system is really broken. Fashion education is to blame for it because we are allowing students to go into companies, to work for free.

I have a friend who's currently at NYU Stern, did her law degree, now doing her MBA, and she has been paid for all her work experience. Another friend based in the States who went to Clarkson was paid for her year out. What's happening in fashion is that we're not truly valuing people's skills and it's become a money grab where schools are telling young people about alumni who have become designers this way, but we're not really thinking about how we can help them have successful careers.

We need to be more selective. How many people get admitted to medical school each year? There is a cap on it, and you see how hard people work to be accepted onto these programs. And because they've worked so hard to be accepted, they also work hard to make something of themselves when they leave. Decades ago, getting admitted into fashion school was a huge thing, and when people left, they would do everything in their power to figure out a career in the space. But now it's almost as if studying fashion promises you a career as an influencer or designer, but it’s just selling people false dreams. It needs to change.