Being a lead, heading a bunch of people skilfully isn’t an effortless task. Remaining one with such innate qualities that people would want to see the person continue being a head is a thing all the more tough. But a few possess such skills very naturally. One such is Asha Jayakrishnan.

Ever since she completed her courses in designing, Asha has been associated with just one place for career — The Queen’s School of Fashion, a leading designs institute in city. The lady has been heading the institute as its Principal since 15 years and has been associated with it for 20 years, from the time of its establishment in Mysore in the year 1995.

Talking of her experience, Asha explains, “I passed out of the JSS Polytechnic Institute as a graduate after which I did advanced fashion designing programme from JD Institute of Fashion Technology, Bangalore and upgraded with short term certifications in garment technology and styling from Delhi and Pune Institutes before joining Queens as a faculty in 1995.”

Ask her how it feels being the head of an institute for years together, she says, “It is a very proud feeling. It feels wonderful to head and nurture many talented budding designers who have reached places today. However, I am thankful to the management of my institute for believing in my capabilities to head the school for so long.

Like most of the designing students who decide upon taking up designing assignments post studies, Asha too initially started working as a designer under designer Gagan Thalwar of Palmis, Bangalore. However, her intuition always told her that she would make it better as a tutor and thus a few years later she switched over to the academic field.

Today, she attributes her achievement not just to the encouragement by the management but to her family too. “My family is the reason behind my successful journey in making Queens carve out a unique place for itself in Mysore, which is a great educational hub. Even as I have been heading the school, I have also won many national level design awards in fashion and embroidery which makes me proud. Personally, I take up freelance designing assignments to kindle the designer spirit in me. I also do styling and counselling on how people can illusorily perfect their figure by changing their style since I believe style brings confidence in a person. My future plans involve designing and styling for larger women segment.”

However, whatever she does, her main focus will always remain Queens School, Asha declares. “I remember it was started in a very small way but has come a long way and made a name for itself now. We have plans to introduce several new programmes including a degree in fashion designing shortly,” she explains.

About Mysore, as the head of a designing institute in city, Asha says the fashion trends here have been changing unlike earlier. “People were not too open to designing or designers before. In fact, many thought fashion designing is no better a job than tailoring, thus hesitating to let their children pursue it for studies or career. However, now many know the value of it, allow their children to study the subject and they themselves head to designers to get their clothes designed.”

Queens School has courses of many varieties that can suit the needs of different kinds of people. “Our streamline is fashion but we also offer interior and jewellery designing courses. As some join the school for professional requirements, some wish to take up designing just to design things for themselves, their friends and families. So, we have special courses that can benefit housewives as well as day to day users while some courses are very professional training students to work in both domestic and international market. Not all of them will become professionals but they show extreme happiness that they can design good products for themselves which makes us happy in turn,” says Asha.

The institute which offers courses certified by National Council for Vocational Training has various kinds of short and long term courses and has been a leading institute since its inception here. “Many of our students own several boutiques in Mysore, have worked for designers across the country, have been associated with some of the best of clothing brand names and many are doing great in the field of interior designing too. And the institute plans to expand soon with many better programmes in offer,” reveals Asha who adds, she will do all the good that she can as a designer and Principal of the school and continues to strive to popularise fashion the right way in the heritage city. —AN

source: http://www.starofmysore.com / Star of Mysore / Home> Feature Articles / August 25th,  2014