Graduate Fashion Week 2011.

Graduate Fashion Week was a great opportunity to see what is expected from a student at the end of the three years. Looking through people’s portfolio’s and sketchbooks was a real eye opener about how much work you are expected to produce.

Overall the standard was really high, there was lots of work that I didn’t particularly like, but I could see it’s merit.  

Earl’s Court II Exhibition Room.

Walking around the exhibition room it was obvious which colleges/universities have money. Some produced very thorough and detailed magazines, whilst some other places had smaller leaflets.

Everyone was trying to do that little bit more to get noticed. I realised that there wasn’t much of a focus on menswear. As someone who is mainly interested in menswear I can look at this in two ways. Firstly, there is less competition and so it may be slightly easier to have a more memorable collection. Secondly, there isn’t as much desire for menswear in the fashion industry so it may be more difficult to get going.

Obviously menswear has a place in the fashion industry, but how much smaller that place is is really rammed home at events such as this. I’m going to take this as a positive, as it means there is less chance for work to be produced which is very samey. What I mean by that is when I was walking around the exhibition room I noticed that lots of the work produced for women was basically done in the same way – there was a few eye-catching stand out pieces, but lots of it seemed to fit into a similar mould. It’s almost at the stage where women designing for women are ten a penny.

Edinburgh College of Art &

University of Central Lancashire Shows.

The two shows that I saw were from Edinburgh and Central Lancashire. Both shows were good, but the Edinburgh one seemed more professional.

The garments seemed to follow current trends which was a surprise, there was lots of colour-blocking and tailored garments.

It slightly daunting about how much work and effort had gone into each collection – and again showed just how much work is expected from a graduate student.