ESMOD

Fashion school / Partner to the Foundation’s fashion scholarship programme, sponsored by Jean Paul Gaultier (2010)

Éric Bergère, Jérôme Dreyfus and Fifi Chachnil are among the latest alumni of an institution well known not only for the quality of its teaching (thanks to its fifty or so teachers) but also for being the world’s oldest fashion school. Founded in 1841 by Alexis Lavigne, master tailor to the Empresse Eugénie (and to whom we owe the invention of the tailor’s dummy), Esmod was the subject of renewed interest a century and a half later with the advent of prêt à porter in the 1970s. Now with a presence in five continents, the school which is private but whose degree is government-accredited  has twenty-one branches from Bordeaux to Berlin, from Rennes to Beijing and from Lyon to São Paulo, with Paris acting as the head of this vast international network.

During their course, students can thus choose from a range of modules lasting from three months to a year, in a city of their choice. This openness to the outside world in turn enables the Paris school to host students from 63 different nationalities, on three-year courses in design (making prototypes) and patternmaking (making clothes in large volumes), following which they can select from eight specialisations (womenswear, menswear, new women’s tailoring, lingerie, kidswear, theatrical costumes, knitwear and accessories).