Why Fashion's Skills Gap Won't Be Fixed by Universities — And What Practitioners Can Do Instead

Thank you to everyone who replied and commented on my previous post. There was one key theme that appeared across all your comments: the question of "who will lead the change in fashion education?" 

My answer? Honestly? Probably not a university. And probably not a luxury conglomerate either. The real skills gap in fashion isn't theoretical; it's operational.

Graduates arrive without the foundations that actually matter in a working environment: costing, range planning, factory communication, margin thinking, technical documentation, and commercial decision-making. You already know this. You've seen it firsthand, probably more times than you'd like to count.

The knowledge that would actually fix this gap isn't sitting in an academic journal. It's actually sitting inside people like you. Hard-won, field-tested, and rarely written down anywhere, a graduate could find it.

And yet universities will spend years redesigning a curriculum before anything substantially changes. Large brands will commission a report, hold a roundtable, and move on. Neither moves at the speed the industry needs, and neither has the specificity to make a real difference on the ground.

I think there is a better way.

A collaborative curriculum built by three or four working professionals in a single product category. Outerwear, lingerie, technical textiles, whatever the sector. Structured around what a graduate genuinely needs to survive and contribute from day one.

Not a broad overview of the industry. A focused, commercially grounded learning experience built around one category, by the people who know it best.

• Relevant because it's built by practitioners actually doing the work.
• Specifically, because it reflects how one sector really operates.
• Fast because it doesn't require institutional approval or a five-year strategy.
• Accessible because it doesn't carry a degree price tag.

But knowledge alone doesn't build a learning experience. That's the part that most good intentions get stuck on. The industry is full of talented, experienced professionals who have tried to capture what they know and ended up with a folder of notes, a half-finished slide deck, and a good idea that never quite came together. Turning expertise into something structured, engaging, and professionally delivered requires a different set of skills entirely. It requires someone who understands both the knowledge and the craft of making it teachable.

For the right collaborators, the commitment doesn't need to be overwhelming. The practitioner's role is to share what they know. Their experience, their hard-won perspective, their sense of what matters most. The architecture, the structure, the build? That's handled.

What we're really asking of the right people is their time, their insight, and their willingness to pass something forward.

Making it Happen At Scale

And here's what that could look like at scale. Not as a fantasy, but as a realistic picture of what happens when practitioners across the industry decide to stop waiting.

For example:

• An outerwear manufacturer and two garment technologists come together and build a short, focused program on technical documentation and factory communication. The stuff that causes expensive mistakes in the first week on the job.
• A group of independent brand founders create something on margin thinking and range planning. The commercial realities that nobody explains until a graduate has already made a costly error.
• A sustainability lead and two sourcing specialists create a grounded, jargon-free introduction to ethical sourcing that reflects how real buying decisions are made under real budget pressure.
• A buying team and a merchandiser collaborate on a program that demystifies the commercial calendar. How decisions get made, who influences them, and how to contribute meaningfully from day one.

None of these is theoretical. Every single one represents knowledge that already exists, held by people already working in the industry.

What's missing isn't the expertise. It's the structure, the format, and someone to help turn it into something teachable.

Now imagine those programs sitting alongside each other. Not as a single monolithic curriculum, but as a growing library of category-specific, practitioner-built learning experiences that a graduate can move through based on where they're heading. Technical. Commercial. Communicative. Cultural. A rounded picture of industry readiness, built from the ground up by the people who define what readiness actually means.

That's not a revolution. That's just what happens when the right people decide to share what they know.

That frustration you've felt watching graduates struggle with things you learned the hard way? That's not just your irritation. That's your expertise, looking for somewhere useful to go.

If you work inside a small-to-mid fashion brand, a production house, a manufacturing unit, or a technical and commercial role, and you've ever thought, "Why does nobody teach this before they arrive?" I'd genuinely like to talk with you.

Send me a Direct Message with the word "Gap" and tell me which sector you're in.

This is no grand revolution nor institutional politics. It's just a meaningful conversation about turning your hard-won experience into something the next generation can actually learn from before they walk through your door.