Industrial Trip to Tirupur 2019 from ICAT, Chennai

ICAT Design and Media College, Chennai, the department of Fashion Design, had taken the students for Industrial Trip from 21st October to 23rd October 2019.

As a part of the curriculum, the visit was to mass manufacturing factories and understand the processes. The trip started with a visit to a sarees manufacturing and printing unit at Erode. Students were given a tour and saw live making of a saree from scratch till it has become a finished product. They were shown screen printing process and a live demonstration of making screens through uv process. The dichotomy of doing manually and using machines was witnessed as the industry had both facilities. As time progressed and with faster demands the factory has shifted more towards reliance on machineries.

The next visit was to Tirupur where they had seen about knitwear. Students were taken to the knitting industry where they saw a functioning circular knitting machine make single jersey, auto-stripe fabric from yarns. The chemical process involved in dyeing was shown and they had a look at the drying process. Cut, make, and trim process happening in a medium scale factory stitching for a well renowned brand was demonstrated.

Finally, students were taken to pigment printing and screen printing cottage industry. Students had a hands on experience of printing on t-shirts and seeing foil printing as well.

Overall this was a very interesting and productive trip for the students to get first hand experience in the industry and understand the struggle behind making of clothes found in retail shop and al the process behind the scenes.