It is December and the first term just ended. After eight weeks of studying, it’s now time to rest and learn for the first two exams in January. Now let’s talk about the academic aspects here at Istituto Marangoni in London.
The BA is slightly different at Istituto Marangoni than at Macromedia. Here you study three years and finish your BA with a proper business plan (for the Fashion Business students only) instead of a written academic writing like at Macromedia. Each year is separated in three terms with a duration from respectively eight weeks. After each term there is a little examination period of about two weeks. Some subjects last only one term, others last the whole academic year. Due to our semester dates the Macromedia Students stay only till the end of term two and our exams will be included in the eight weeks of our second term. An important point is that at Istituto Marangoni attendance is mandatory and checked before every session. You have to attend 80% of the sessions otherwise there will be severe consequences and in addition to that you need after three days of absence a medical excuse from a doctor.
The normal school day starts at 8:30am. There are four slots of sessions each day. The first one starts at 8:30am and lasts till 11:00am. After a 15-minute break the next sessions starts at 11:15 am and lasts till 1:45pm. Then there is the „big“ lunch break till 2:45pm.., during which you can explore the amazing restaurants e.g., at Spitalfields Market located around the school. The third session starts at 2:45pm and goes on until 5:15pm. The last one starts at 5:30pm and finishes at 8:00pm.
As a Macromedia student, you usually have sessions three days a week and sometimes online sessions as well e.g., via Blackboard Collaborate.
Our big project for term one was the planning of a new retail space for “Matchesfashion” which is a multi-brand luxury retailer comparable with “MyTheresa” in East-London with the topics of sustainability and customer experience. For this project we needed to conduct market research, develop an appropriate marketing strategy, and collect data and information for the management of the project. We also applied several strategies like Porter’s 5 Forces, AIDA/RACE or Blue Ocean Strategy. At the end of the project we had to select 15 sustainable brands to sell in the store.
The plan for the next term is to completely create a sustainable capsule collection for Bottega Veneta.
The grading system differs from Macromedia. Here the students receive percentages. You need 40% to pass an exam – this corresponds to a 4.0 at Macromedia. The best mark you can achieve are 100%, but 70% already correspond to a 1.0 at Macromedia. Also, most of the project works are divided into a written part that you upload and an oral discussion regrind your work.
As Macromedia Students we enjoy a little special treatment. Our amazing course leader Sennait planned many activities to support the research for our projects, sometimes combined with small extra projects. In addition, the activities were designed to provide us with an even greater insight into the international luxury fashion business.
We visited the Bottega Veneta Pop-Up Space and twice the Gucci Circle Shoreditch and had an amazing tour through the spaces and gained some really helpful information regarding our project. We also visited Bicester Village, a huge off-price retail space, comparable to outlets like Outletcity Metzingen or Wertheim Village.
Our biggest activity was a short three-day trip to Milan. There we had many activities like a pitch-presentation for a new pop-up store for Marni in East-London, planned by ourselves. Therefore, we met the Chief Marketing Officer of Marni, Chungaiz Khan Mumtaz and Umberto Lobina, Business Analyst for McKinsey & Company. Another activity in Milan was the visit of the Headquarter of Alberta Ferretti to receive some insights into the PR and communication behind a luxury brand.
Due to the new Covid-19 variant, Omicron, it’s a bit unsure how our next term will take place. There are some new restrictions regarding the academics and also new entry rules in the UK. But we will see how things go in January.