From Playing With Dolls to a Pre-Placement Offer at Arvind: How Simran Singh Built a Fashion Career on Textile Science at Parul Institute of Design

Simran Singh‘s interest in fashion started with dolls, and turned into a career the day she realised her creativity could work on real people and real fabric. When she looked for a place to study design formally, an advertisement for Parul University caught her attention, and two things about it settled the decision: the facilities and equipment at Parul Institute of Design, and the campus location in Vadodara, close to Surat, the largest textile cluster in India. She did not want to only draw clothes. She wanted to understand the science of how fabric is made, and being near Surat meant learning that from the source.

Simran grew up studying the big fashion houses, Dior and Versace among them, watching how they dressed a specific audience and spoke to a particular kind of customer. That attention pushed her toward formal design education, and Parul Institute of Design, part of the Faculty of Design at Parul University, gave her four years to turn the interest into a discipline. By the end of it she had a Pre-Placement Offer at Arvind, one of India’s major textile and apparel companies, secured during her internship rather than after it.

This sits alongside other documented outcomes from the Faculty of Design at Parul University, including Prernakumari Patel’s Bloodline Pact collection, Khushi Dehade at Mix Bunch, Dipali Gupta at Zebein, and Aditi Jagdish’s fashion merchandising route to Pantaloons. The broader placement record is at the Parul University placement record.

Most fashion students think first about garments. Simran thought about fabric. She went on to pursue the field of design to learn the science of textile production from start to end. Her aim was not only to master the design part but also to learn about the nature of cloth, types of fabric, threads, etc. The choice behind the college was to stay near her hometown, Surat. Vadodara is close to Surat, and Surat is one of the largest textile clusters in the country, where her learning will exist with practice.

That instinct shaped her whole four years. She was never the student who only sketched garments on paper. She worked with her hands, producing a large number of fabrics herself, experimenting with raw yarn, wool, and unusual materials to understand the real weight and texture of what a garment would become. Studying across a wide range of subjects gave her the technical base that later made her credible in an industry interview.

The final semester at PID (Parul Institute of Design) requires a project, which is supposed to be presented at the university level at the grand fashion show. Students work in teams of two so that they learn to initiate and take responsibility. Simran, with her parents, took a retail collection that is built around khadi material, keeping rooted in traditions and culturally significant to Indian handspun fabric.

Rather than treat khadi conventionally, Simran took it somewhere experimental. She went ahead with an avant-garde approach, each garment designed with details, expression, and artistic touch; rather than everyday wear, she used contemplative themes, such as natural decay, with each garment signifying the natural process and culture of fabric India.

After the final show and major project, Simran moved from the classroom into the corporate world through an internship at Arvind, which began in mid-January 2026. The opportunity came through the university’s placement cell, which shared the opening with eligible candidates. Simran applied on her own and faced the interview alone, and her academic record and textile knowledge won the panel over.

The internship carried the responsibility of a full role. In an intense initial stretch of roughly a month, she absorbed the business side of fashion and reached a conclusion that reshaped how she saw the field: being a creative designer is only one part of the picture. The whole chain, from producing the product to selling the final garment, is what makes a fashion company work. She learned to handle different customers and meet their needs through her own ideas, and although she found she did not enjoy the sales side, the exposure was valuable. It taught her that a designer who understands the commercial reality of fashion is worth more than one who only designs.

Also Read: Sanskriti Singh’s Journey through her project work to internship.

During the internship, with her remarkable performance, Simran received the Pre-Placement Offer from Arvind, while still undergoing training. Her placement journey starts after the internship ends. She received the entry-level job with a package of 25k per month. It was also a proud moment as she could crack this before her graduation.

In the Pre-Placement Offer (PPO), the intern is trained, evaluated, and observed by a senior assigned. This saves the candidate from job hunting and also prepares them mentally to work at the familiar place. For Simran, it validated the technical preparation she had built across four years, and it moved her directly from student to working professional without a gap.

The move from college to work changed what mattered. In university, the measure was submitting assignments and scoring well. In the professional world, the measure was ownership of the tasks she was trusted with. She learned quickly that a salary is earned by performing under real responsibility and adding value to the company, not by completing assignments. She became focused on time management and task management, and on the recognition that every detail matters in the larger picture.

Her own line captures the attitude she built: do what you love and love what you are doing. She holds that reaching a goal requires enjoying the work rather than being selective about which parts of it to engage with, an attitude that maps directly onto the range of tasks a real fashion role demands, including the commercial ones a designer might prefer to avoid.

Simran’s advice to new fashion students is specific. Do not confine yourself to one thing: experiment with materials, colours, and ideas. Step out of the classroom and meet students from other departments, product designers and visual designers in the same building, to build a broad picture of design as a field, because fashion now demands far more than cutting and sewing fabric. And guard two things above all, patience and self-confidence, because the industry brings distractions and people who dismiss fashion design as a serious career. Her instruction is to ignore that noise, stay motivated, and keep building skills, because every skill acquired serves a future job or a future startup.

That last point connects to her own ambition. Simran’s five-year goal is to launch her own fashion label, a brand reflecting the childhood passion that started her on this path, built to connect with a specific audience and carry her own point of view. For students who want to build a label rather than only join a company, Parul University supports that route through PIERC, the Parul Innovation and Entrepreneurship Research Centre, which has supported 254 startups across sectors including consumer and lifestyle brands, and frames its mission as building a business-ready mindset that lets students carve their own path. Simran’s trajectory, a placement now and a label later, uses both sides of that.

Simran built this outcome inside an institution structured for it. Parul University holds NAAC A++ accreditation at a CGPA of 3.55, Category 1 status with Grant of Graded Autonomy, and has been awarded Best University in Placements by ASSOCHAM for three consecutive years, with 2,200+ recruiting companies. In the Times Higher Education Sustainability Impact Ratings 2026, it ranks 7th in India for SDG 4 (Quality Education) and 6th in India for SDG 5 (Gender Equality). For a fashion design student who wanted textile depth, a final-year platform, and an industry route, that infrastructure is what carried her from a first-year sketch to a Pre-Placement Offer at Arvind.