College students will soon be able to get their hands on valuable tools for color management thanks to a new partnership spearheaded by specialty chemicals company Archroma.
The Swiss company is donating its Color Atlas, a ready-to-use color library for cotton and polyester, to students enrolled in the University of North Carolina Greensboro (UNCG) Consumer, Apparel and Retail Studies (CARS) department. Developed in 2016, the library spans a range of 4,320 colors for cotton and 1,440 colors for polyester—all of which can be seamlessly implemented in production with just a few clicks.
Once considered an American denim capital, Greensboro, N.C. is a strategic city for this type of investment. In 2021, the former Blue Bell plant, which was responsible for manufacturing suspender-back denim overalls in the 1920s and garments for the U.S. Armed Forces during World War II, was added to the National Register of Historic Places. The city is also the headquarters for Kontoor Brands, VF Corp.’s denim spin-off, and was home to Cone Denim’s iconic White Oak Mill, where Made in USA selvedge denim was produced for more than 100 years before it shut down in 2017.
UNCG students will also have access to Browzwear VSticher, a 3D fashion design and development software program. More than 650 fashion firms such as PVH, VF Corporation and Columbia Sportswear use Browzwear’s technology to streamline design.
Providing students with industry-leading technology can translate to immense benefits in the long-term, as young designers entering the field are often touted as the industry’s changemakers.
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In February, Jersey City, N.J.-based BPD Washhouse and a team of representatives from Macy’s visited the Newark School of Fashion Design to present its Denim 101 course on the wet and dry process techniques used in commercial washhouses to students. It later welcomed the same group of high school students to its facility for hands-on training.
Turkish denim mill Isko partnered with globally recognized fashion school Institut Français de la Mode (IFM) and Kering, the luxury group that owns labels such as Gucci, Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta and Balenciaga, to develop a 10-week course dedicated to sustainable fashion. The course, which launched last year, covers the history and values of sustainable fashion as well as how to develop a successful corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy.
“Archroma is very proud to help grow a young generation of students who launch in their careers armed with hands-on experience on our innovative color management tools,” said Fred Gliddon, dyeing operations and sales manager at Archroma. “The Color Atlas by Archroma is not only a practical, actionable platform for efficient, time-saving color management, it is also a wonderful source of inspiration with more than 5,760 colors.”