Under the terms of the agreement, the Tendam Classroom – Advanced Fashion Design Centre for Sustainability, Responsibility, and Innovation in Fashion Design will be created

Tendam, the retail company that includes the brands Cortefiel, Pedro del Hierro, Women’secret, Springfield and Fifty, and the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) announced the signing of an agreement to create the Tendam Classroom – Advanced Fashion Design Centre for Sustainability, Responsibility, and Innovation in Fashion Design (Aula Tendam – Centro Superior de Diseño de Moda, “CSDMM” sobre Sostenibilidad, Responsabilidad e Innovación en el Diseño de Moda).

The agreement, signed by the CEO of Tendam, Jaume Miquel, and the chancellor of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Guillermo Cisneros, focuses on academic and scientific cooperation and aims to promote innovation between the two institutions.

For this Classroom, Tendam and the Advanced Fashion Design Centre of Madrid will establish specific training objectives related to sustainability, responsibility, and innovation in fashion design, which will be reflected in part of the official masters degree program taught at the Madrid university beginning in September 2018: Fashion Engineer.

According to Tendam CEO, Jaume Miquel, “This agreement is another example of our commitment to society and the fulfilment of our training mission with a three-fold objective: to support young talent, train professionals, and professionalise the industry. Our company strives to develop sustainable fashion as a permanent fixture in the textile market and reduce the problems we currently face, such as the high cost of production and, subsequently, of sales.”

For his part, Guillermo Cisneros, chancellor of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, explained, “Innovation in techniques, technologies, and production processes must be present in all phases of design if we want this to be the solution to the industry’s future challenges, and specifically, to the issue of sustainability, an increasingly relevant requisite in this market. That is why the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, with the Advanced Fashion Design Centre as a national and international benchmark, continues to partner with the most important companies and institutions in the industry—like Tendam—to train fashion design professionals at the forefront of technology.”

The University-Company Classrooms are a way for the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid to collaborate with public and private institutions to engage in activities relating to teaching, the generation of knowledge, and the diffusion and transfer of technology in a scientific-technical area of common interest. These Classrooms aim to encourage university students to participate in the research projects and initiatives under development in the specific fields that correspond to each of them.