College taps into social network for fashion students

Adrian Siew Wai Yen, director of Raffles International College (formerly known as Raffles Design Institute), said the new 14-rai campus would support 5,000 students in the future. The campus would include a gymnasium, football pitch, canteen, retail shops, dormitories and computer lab, as well as many open and green spaces, he said.

The college’s current campus, in the Silom Centre Building, currently has 400 students, over half of them Thais. Established in 2003, Raffles offers 11 design programmes in fashion, fashion marketing, interior design, multimedia design, product design, graphic design, banking and finance, event management, tourism and hospitality, management, and marketing.

Yen spoke at a press event about Raffles’ “Sixth Graduation Show 2011: 6th Sense”, which students publicised through logo, poster and invitation card designs, and presentations on projectors featuring the graduates’ work. 

The event was a collaboration between the college, Four Seasons Hotel and Cancercare, and helped raise funds for cancer research in Thailand, Yen said. Event tickets were sold for Bt400 apiece, with the college aiming to make Bt350,000 for the cause. The students’ fashion skills were also put into use via a T-shirt design contest, whose winning pieces would also be used in the fund-raising campaign for Cancercare, he said.