IFA Paris: What is the purpose of a fashion school when careers evolve faster than qualifications?

There was a time when fashion schools primarily trained students to create. The market now demands understanding. This includes understanding pricing, margins, data, supply chains, environmental regulations, and the digital tools that are already starting to shift certain roles.

Jean-Baptiste Andreani, who has led IFA Paris since 2015, champions an educational approach rooted in this reality. Creativity remains the foundation. However, it can no longer be taught in isolation from the economy, technology, or industrial constraints that now surround every product.

This change is not immediately obvious. It cannot be seen in a fashion show. It is measured elsewhere, in emerging professions, the skills companies seek, and even in the profiles of students now entering fashion schools.

A design student must understand the cost of a collection and the price at which it can be sold. A future merchandising manager must know how to read data, but also comprehend the story it tells and what it leaves out. A marketing professional must now work with traceability, environmental footprints, and new labelling regulations. Creatives work with materials whose design involves science and technology. Everyone is evolving in an industry where artificial intelligence is already beginning to displace certain tasks.

Fashion has not ceased to be a creative industry. It has simply become much more difficult to understand in its entirety.

Since his arrival at the helm of IFA Paris, the school has grown from around 150 students to nearly 1,200 in just a decade. 70 percent of these students are international, representing 111 nationalities. This diversity also changes how students learn their craft. They not only discover other cultures; they are also confronted with different ways of thinking about fashion, the market, and business. The partnership with the American university Kent State provides a good example: each year, approximately 120 American students join IFA Paris. Internationalisation did not follow the school's development. It has gradually become central to its operations. Behind this growth, the profile of students and the content of the courses have also evolved profoundly.

People no longer come just to learn a trade. They come to acquire the keys to an industry where economic constraints, standards, technology, and data now play a role far beyond the functions with which they were traditionally associated.

Fashion remains a creative sector. Those who want to build a career in it must now know how to read more than just a silhouette.

From a 'detour' to academic leadership

Nothing truly destined Jean-Baptiste Andreani to lead one of the world's top international fashion schools. A graduate of an HEC preparatory class and then SKEMA, he seemed to be on a fairly conventional path towards major corporations. This was before what his own mother would kindly describe as an “adolescent crisis at 24”. A ticket to Asia, a somewhat improvised departure, and a first change of direction.

In Bangkok, he began by teaching English to children in a convent. The experience was brief, lasting just six months, but it would permanently alter his perspective on education.

He then discovered a gap that would become a recurring theme in his career. It is perfectly possible to transmit knowledge yet fail to prepare someone to use it. A course can be solid, well-researched, and well-structured, yet remain detached from the real demands of professional life.

This is where a conviction that would stay with him began to form. For Andreani, the 'real world' does not simply mean what is concrete or immediately useful. It refers to what will actually be expected of a graduate upon entering the market. Tools change, jobs shift, and companies alter their organisations and recruitment criteria. A static curriculum ultimately teaches an industry that no longer fully exists.

This belief likely explains his commitment to constructive doubt. He does not consider a method correct just because it has always been taught. He does not deem a practice relevant simply because it has become a sector habit. Before making a decision, one must observe, verify, understand why a company operates in a certain way, and question whether it could function differently.

The detour then becomes a career path. Andreani joined the Singaporean education group Raffles, taught marketing, became a programme director, and then academic director in Bangkok, and was involved in evaluating several campuses. He would go on to manage institutions with over 2,500 students in Bangkok and Shanghai before taking the helm at IFA Paris in 2015.

His approach to fashion stems from this career path. He does not claim to be a designer, a fashion academic, or an expert. His position is almost the opposite. He prefers to observe, question, bring professionals into the school, and challenge certainties against the realities of the sector. “I always start from the premise that I am not an expert when it comes to fashion. However, I am very curious by nature.”

The remark could be seen as a sign of humility. Yet it says a great deal about his method. Andreani would later confide in us about his own journey, “talking about oneself and one’s career is a bit pedantic, isn’t it?”.

Behind this reserve lies a pedagogical conviction. In an industry where technology, regulations, and business models evolve rapidly, knowledge cannot be considered definitively acquired. The school must provide enough knowledge to understand, but also enough perspective to continue questioning it.

Creatives must now understand business

In many organisations, functions were for a long time relatively easy to separate. Departments operated in silos. Creatives handled creation; finance dealt with figures; marketing focused on the consumer; and merchandising managed sales.

This division is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain. The profitability of a collection depends on creative choices, but also on volumes, price, materials, and distribution. A merchandising decision is based on data, but it requires an understanding of the product. An environmental policy can alter sourcing, manufacturing costs, and consequently, the final price. Traceability adds new demands to an already global value chain.

For Andreani, this complexity must be brought into the classroom. At IFA Paris, finance, accounting, business planning, and cash-flow management are not reserved for management students. Creatives must also understand the economics of what they produce. “Understanding the commercial potential of a collection, understanding market needs, and determining a price are very important things,” he explains.

The goal is not to turn a designer into a financier. It is to provide them with enough economic literacy to understand that a creation exists within a system of constraints, and that these constraints themselves help define the product. This is a significant evolution of the profession. The creative no longer works alone in front of their drawing board or software. They must engage in dialogue with merchandising, sourcing, finance, production, data, and sometimes with teams responsible for measuring the environmental impact of the product they envision. This porosity between creation and technology is also reflected in the teachings at IFA Paris, particularly around Fashion Tech. The school collaborates with industry players, notably through partnerships linked to the Avantex trade fair, and provides its students with a Fashion Tech Lab where they can experiment with new tools and applications.

The objective is not to make every creative an engineer, but to enable them to understand the technologies that are beginning to transform their profession. The school must therefore learn to speak several professional languages.

Learning to question before learning to decide

Sustainability is a good indicator of this new pedagogical approach. At IFA Paris, it is not limited to a few courses on upcycling, recycled materials, or natural dyes. Traceability, environmental footprint measurement, eco-labels, and regulations are integrated into the curriculum because they are starting to concretely change the design, manufacturing, and marketing of products.

Andreani is not seeking to replace one orthodoxy with another. He wants his students to learn to question what is presented to them as a given. Is a regulation relevant in all situations? Is an environmental promise based on sufficiently solid data? Is a material presented as more virtuous truly so when its entire life cycle is considered? What should be done when an environmental objective conflicts with an industrial or economic constraint?

“Sustainability is important, but it is not something absolute and unchanging,” he explains. The sentence aptly summarises what he means by “constructive doubt”. It is not about relativising everything. It is about not confusing a rule with a truth, an indicator with reality, or an innovation with progress.

In an industry that accumulates data, labels, standards, and technological promises, this capacity for discernment becomes a professional skill in itself. The student is therefore not just asked to memorise an answer. They must learn to understand where it comes from, compare it with other information, and form their own judgement.

This is probably one of the most profound changes in how Andreani conceives of the school. Training is not about filling a head with knowledge. It is also about learning to recognise when that knowledge is no longer sufficient.

When data enters creation

The same shift can be observed with data. One only needs to look at merchandising. It no longer relies solely on commercial skill, but on sales, stock levels, consumer behaviour, and product performance, which now inform brand decisions. This data can alter forecasts, assortments, promotions, and even production volumes.

Skills long associated with business or engineering schools are thus entering the daily work of fashion professionals. Andreani, however, refuses to replace intuition with data. The challenge is rather to learn how to work with it without surrendering one's judgement. This distinction becomes even more significant with the advent of artificial intelligence. An AI can produce, accelerate, compare, and synthesise. It does not, however, necessarily know the history of a house, its codes, its references, what has already been created, or why a particular image works within a given brand universe.

The more tools allow for the rapid generation of proposals, the more valuable the ability to select, edit, contextualise, and give meaning becomes. Technology accelerates production, but it cannot eliminate the need for judgement. It is precisely this distinction that Andreani wants to integrate into the curriculum. Students must know how to use the emerging tools, but also understand what they do, what they do not do, and how they might change their profession.

There is a world beyond design

This transformation of the curriculum automatically broadens the range of career opportunities. This is already evident in the aspirations of young students. The dream of working for a major fashion house remains. It is no longer the only destination.

Andreani encourages his students to look beyond traditional job titles and consider sectors where skills developed in fashion can find other applications. Product design, interior architecture, automotive, aviation, apparel technologies, new materials, and data analysis now offer playgrounds that students do not always consider when they first enter a fashion school.

“Do not hesitate to take detours,” he advises. The phrase obviously resonates with his own journey. The man who began by teaching English in Asia before leading a fashion school does not advocate for a very linear career path. His career almost serves as a practical demonstration of his pedagogical approach.

Fashion education today can lead to careers in spatial or furniture design, automotive and aeronautical cabin ergonomics, biomaterials research, or commercial data analysis. One student might be drawn to materials and end up in a laboratory. Another might start with the product and find themselves in data analysis or predictive merchandising.

This shift also says something about the new audience for fashion schools. You still find young people who dream of creation and luxury, but also profiles attracted by technology, business, materials, sustainability, or data. Fashion is becoming less of a single profession and more of a professional territory, with pathways to other industries.

Ultimately, Andreani applies to education what he has experienced in his own career. He often quotes Karl Lagerfeld and his saying that “fashion is not about prescribing, it’s about proposing”. The school, in this view, should not dictate a professional trajectory. It must provide enough culture and confidence to allow for change.

Why the US matters so much

This openness is reflected in IFA Paris's international strategy. The US is now its primary recruitment market. The goal is not simply to accumulate partnerships on a world map. Jean-Baptiste Andreani insists on another criterion: the compatibility of programmes and pedagogical philosophies.

Bringing in American, Indian, or Chinese students does not just serve to internationalise a class. It exposes students to different ways of looking at the product, the consumer, the market, and the business.

The project with Kent State around New York Fashion Week is a case in point. Students are tasked with dressing robots, bringing together technology, creation, and experimentation. India is also a significant recruitment market for IFA Paris. Here again, the issue goes beyond geography. Andreani seeks partners who can share the same high standards for curricula and the skills imparted.

Jean-Baptiste Andreani knows what this openness brings. Stepping outside a single framework broadens the range of solutions. A student who has only known one way to produce, sell, or think about fashion is more likely to take that way for granted. They are more likely to arrive at the same solutions as their peers. International exposure is precisely what shatters this assumption.

Leaving school before even graduating

For Andreani, you do not truly prepare a student for the professional world just by talking to them about it. You must make them encounter this world, with its codes, rejections, silences, and constraints.

At IFA Paris, first-year students are encouraged to meet companies directly, introduce themselves, and submit their CVs. At a time when a large portion of applications go through platforms, online forms, and sorting software, the exercise might seem to belong to another era.

One must learn to face rejection before having to deal with it from a recruiter. They must learn to rephrase their pitch, understand why a CV is not working, and look their interlocutor in the eye. They also discover that a company does not just hire a qualification, but someone capable of understanding its environment and finding their place within it.

The institution should not shield the student from the reality they are about to face. It must allow them to confront it early enough to learn how to navigate it.

The challenging professor is sometimes the one you remember

Andreani thus gives significant importance to professionals from fashion houses and the industry. This is not only because they have mastered a technique, but because they know what that technique becomes when it meets a budget, a deadline, a client, or an organisation.

He recounts the case of a particularly demanding lecturer in finance and merchandising. Her classes were not always the most popular among students. Several years later, however, some returned to thank her after joining major houses. A good professional school is not necessarily meant to tell students what they want to hear. It must sometimes impart what they will only later discover they needed.

Meeting a company, working on a real case study, or tackling a difficult subject may be less appealing than a creative exercise. It is no less formative.

The professor who is a little challenging today may be the one a student remembers ten years from now.

Training for adaptability rather than a single profession

What Jean-Baptiste Andreani seems to advocate is that a school cannot know exactly what fashion careers will look like in ten years. It can, however, prepare its students not to be helpless when they do change.

Traceability, data, environmental regulations, new materials, artificial intelligence, and evolving consumer behaviour. Each of these transformations can create new roles or profoundly alter existing ones.

The answer, therefore, is not necessarily to specialise students ever more. It is to give them a broad enough foundation to understand the relationships between different professions. They must know how to create, but also understand a market; analyse data, but also understand a product; know a technology, but also its limitations; and comprehend an environmental issue, but also its economic and industrial consequences.

Fashion will continue to need creators. It will need creators who can communicate with financiers, engineers, data analysts, supply chain teams, and sustainability managers.

This is probably where Jean-Baptiste Andreani's journey comes full circle. The man who started with a detour in Asia now leads a school that teaches students precisely not to be afraid of detours. Knowing what you want to become is the first step; knowing how to learn to become something else is now the real key.