Gujarat: A jacket with airbags for bike riders

AHMEDABAD: It was death of a close friend in a road accident that encouraged Pragati Sharma, a final-year Master of Fashion Technology student at National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT), Gandhinagar, to think about how fashion can promote safety.
“As my graduation project, I developed a safety jacket for bike riders which is made of abrasion-proof material for safety against any minor fall or injuries.Likewise, it has detachable inflated airbags that can absorb any impact. The jacket also has safety guards at elbow and neck to prevent injuries,” said Sharma, adding that the protective apparel can meet style with safety.
The jacket was one of the 40 masters and bachelors graduation projects that were displayed as part of Technova and Technotalk ahead of NIFT’s annual convocation last month. Amisha Mehta, associate professor, NIFT, said that students worked on diverse projects ranging from novel ironing system for fabric developed by Dikshya Sahu to real-time customer feedback for retail stores by Deepshikha Jawalia.
A number of projects took the industry’s perspective for problem-solving. The team of Divanshu Rai and Surabhi Srivastava worked on devising ways to reduce style changeover time through process automation whereas Ajay Gaykwar and Radhe Kumar devised a system to improve retrieval time for finished goods in major processing warehouses in textile industry.
NIFT officials said that factors such as rise of online retail, automation of production lines, development of new fabric, rapid change in style and sensibilities and documentation/analysis to reduce wastage at every level has been both challenge and opportunity for students. “The students work closely with one or more industry mentors to get their feedback at every level and make modifications. An independent jury later evaluates these projects. A few of the initiatives would go beyond student project phase with industries,” said Mehta.