Fashion secrets of talented creators

In 1986, when Franc' Pairon was asked to start a fashion creation department at the La Cambre National School of Visual Arts in Brussels, she was given free rein to create it out of nothing. This was a unique opportunity because she was able to experiment and to break with traditional, existing teaching methods in order to concentrate on understanding the reasons behind creation. The teaching that she developed emphasised the harmony between spontaneity and technical perfection. Her key words are lack of comfort, danger, and surpassing oneself. She uses phrases to her students like 'behind the wall there is always the sea', or 'breaking up is creation ; sleep is for tomorrow'. Today, La Cambre is one of the most highly esteemed training programmes in Europe. Franc' Pairon has an incomparable experience in training stylists and fashion creators which she applies to the Institut Français de la Mode, in a fundamentally different cultural and industrial context in Paris.