A Design Educationist, Consultant, Designer & Entrepreneur
Shipra Anand, Founder Director- Academy for Fashion Careers, Lucknow, is one of the early few NIFT Delhi alumnae, with 26 years of experience behind her. She is a Design Educationist, Design Consultant & and Entrepreneur, who has been playing a pivotal role in Design and Design Education in Lucknow. She has worked extensively in the crafts of Chikankari & Zari-Zardozi.
Having belonged to Lucknow, when fate destined her to come back to Lucknow while her stint with the brand Lacoste, her campus placement, it seemed like professional hara-kiri as well more than two and a half decades ago Lucknow didn’t have much to offer in terms of career after NIFT. As they say, in limitations lie the opportunities too. She realized that Lucknow & UP had a great upcoming need for designers & professionals as this area was completely untouched till then and thus a career in Design Academics chose her. Hence, going with the flow and demands, came Academy for Fashion Careers, a self-owned enterprise, in existence since 1999. The aim of AFC is primarily to educate and create awareness of Design & Fashion as viable career options, its various specializations, and industrial opportunities, introducing students and parents to quality education centers like NID & NIFT, Colleges Abroad, and the requisites for the same, etc, as this was the time before internet took us by storm. With the growing awareness, AFC met the demands of grooming students for the entrances of NID & NIFT and other similar colleges. To her delight, she discovered that she not only was immensely enjoying her role as a Design mentor which also organically evolved into that of a Career Counselor in the field of Design Careers but was good too, gradually earning her repute of being the best in town! Working in the direction, through passionate hard work, today a majority of NID & NIFT graduates, belonging to and around Lucknow, in the last 25 years owe their success to her. Pooja Yadav, designer UPMRC logo, Manish Tripathi (Antardesi & Naveli), Antham by Abhishek, Ivy by Rateesha Bajaj, Sadhvi Suri, and Deepika Chopra Garg just to name a few.
Her passion for bringing quality design education to Lucknow was the motivation behind her to take up the J D Institute of Fashion Technology at Lucknow, which she co-owns with her husband and takes care of the academic excellence standards of the same. She is also a guest faculty at other Design colleges like FDDI.
Her passion for the cause of backward & forward integration of Design studies lead her to be commissioned by CMS Aliganj to start Fashion Design as an elective in their classes, for which she authored their study books as well.
Balancing the role of the educator with that of the designer, she can be credited to be among the first two designers empanelled with DC(H) GOI. Since then she has worked consistently in the artisan sector with various crafts like Chikankari, Zari Zardosi, Terracotta, Punja durri, Patchwork & Jute & leather products.
She is a reputed presence at all quality fashion events, shows, pageants & juries and has been the talk show guest on the Fashion episodes of ‘Sangini For Women’ by ETV for good 10 years before it merged with News 18. She is a regular content contributor on Fashion and Design to various digital publications & platforms.
-Team WS
