LIM College

by Mikayla Bunker

After being at Mod'Art for almost a week now, honestly, I feel there isn’t that much of a difference between the school here and LIM. The first major difference between the two colleges is the area where they are located. As we all know LIM is located in mid-town Manhattan, right in the middle of it all, whereas Mod'Art is in a less populated area of the city.

The neighborhood that Mod'Art is located in has a bunch of little cafés and plenty of places to find a good, quick snack. As far as I understand, the college only has one building in Paris where all the students attend, however, they have plenty of other locations throughout the world.

On the first day of class I was surprised by the layout of the school because, being a marketing student, I am so used to the traditional classroom setting where there are desks that all face the front of the room and the professor stands at front of the class, but that is not the case at Mod'Art. The school has two different majors: one being a fashion design major and the other is in fashion management, so their classrooms are set up to accommodate both.

The classrooms at LIM that I can most equate to the classrooms at Mod'Art are the Fifth Avenue Visual Lab classrooms. Both are larger spaces where students are free to spread out and get their work done.

I think what surprised me the most were the times of the classes. For those of you who do not know, the French Fashion Analysis is a two week program in Paris where you study about various elements of the fashion industry and then at the end of the two weeks you present a self-guided project to the professors of Mod'Art, as well as the faculty that joined you on the trip.

For me this has been a crash course in fashion. We have learned about the luxury industry which consists of not only fashion, but an entire lifestyle. We have gone to museum exhibits such as the Jean Paul Gaultier Exhibit and other museums around the city.

The lectures usually last from two to three hours and the field trips last about three to four hours. I was never the type of person to think that I could sit in a classroom for more than an hour and a half, which is one of the reasons that I loved LIM so much, but I can honestly say that sitting in the classrooms and listening to people talk about fashion, perfumes and lifestyles sparks my interest and that’s why it’s been so easy to sit and listen to lectures.

The main similarity that I find between the professors of LIM and the professors of Mod'Art is that they all encourage student involvement and make sure that everyone in the classroom is paying attention.

For example on Tuesday the 16^th we had a three hour long presentation on the history of French perfume. I was a little weary going into the presentation because this was only the second presentation inside of a classroom and it was three hours long.

After a little background about French perfume and what the differences were between perfumes we began to start smelling perfumes and there were plenty of games that went along with it. The three hours seemed to fly by and although I was sad when the presentation was over (because it was that interesting!), I also realized that this could have been another one of my classes at LIM.

Many people say that all fashion schools are the same, but I never really believed them because at LIM we don’t create fashion, we just handle the business aspects of fashion. A lot of the lectures that I’ve heard here at Mod'Art are not something that I could have gotten back at LIM, but I believe that’s what makes each school special and in fact not all fashion schools are the same. Each fashion school focuses on their own unique look at the fashion world and I am so happy that I was able to go on this trip and learn all about the various aspects of fashion through the eyes of a Parisian.