School Hopes to Help India Fashion Image

India’s dress style for hundreds of years has been six yards of fabric wrapped into a sari. It hardly seems the place for a Western fashion design center.

But a school that has recently opened in New Delhi intends to make fast-changing haute couture a part of Indian culture.

The National Institute of Fashion Technology, founded in collaboration with the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, launched its first fashion design course in August.

Next fall it will introduce two-year diploma programs in the making and marketing of clothes for men and women.

“India has no shortage of talent,” said Richard Streiter, an administrator on loan from the New York school. “What they have lacked is a center of learning to train professionals who understand design, production and marketing on an international level.”