Graduate Fashion Week 2010

Highlights from Graduate Fashion Week…

It feels like some time ago now – and it actually was, things have been a bit mad here – but 6th-10th June saw Graduate Fashion Week 2010 take over Earls Court 2 in London. The event first began in 1991 to showcase the best BA Graduate fashion design talent in the UK, and has since launched the careers of British designers such as Stella McCartney and Julian MacDonald.

This year we were there with our Fashion Design books, and a few other titles from our Photography, Graphic Design and Illustration disciplines.

It was a first for us and a bit of an experiment. Luckily it was a successful one, with our sales each day beating our targets. The special discounts we were doing definitely helped, but it was also gratifying to get some great feedback from those who already knew our books. Meeting a few actual readers face to face is nice for all of us, especially for the editors who have pored over forthcoming books for months until they basically know them by heart. 

We took it in turns to go up on different days – a London excursion is always eagerly awaited by some and dreaded by others! – and between us we have chosen a few of the highlights…

• Simon Sievewright (author of Basics Fashion Design: Research and Design) having his student Rhea Fields, from Northbrook College, winning the prize for womenswear – also a students coming up and telling us that his book got her through her degree
• Lots of students entering our competition for a free book of their choice – our winner chose a copy of Fashion Drawing.

• Hearing Tinie Tempah perform on Tuesday (we did think this was a bit random) and our whole stand shaking!
• A woman buying Mark Wigan’s Basics Illustration: Thinking Visually and telling us with a glow of pride that she gave him his first job
• Alex Russell, author of a forthcoming Fashion Design title, coming over to say hello and getting us tickets to the Manchester Metropolitan show where we saw Rebecca Thomson’s collection – which was very exciting because she went on to win the River Island Gold Award!

• Sarah and Rachel from our office getting to attend the Gala show, which was presented by the lovely Caryn Franklin. It opened with a performance from Diversity and included Zandra Rhodes, Nicola from Girls Aloud and Rachel Stevens from S Club 7 all presenting awards
• Free Skinny Cow ice creams! What an inspired idea for all those models…and we thought they were delicious

• Lots of people telling us that they love the books, including 2 women who kept coming back and joking about who could buy (and carry!) the most books – the winner had 5!

There were also some great pieces of clothing on display, here are a few people admiring a dress at the University of Huddersfield stand:

 And some great stands too – we bet on Arts University College Bournemouth to win the best stand prize and were proved right!

There were some other great stands as well, including this fantastic hanger-tangle from the Colchester School of Art and Design

and Plymouth College of Art and Design

and the Amsterdam Fashion Institute

and UCLAN

and Northumbria University

and Croydon Higher Education College

and finally the amazing lego-inspired (we think) design of the De Montfort University stand!

Overall though the best things were the student work on display – and of course the shows we were lucky enough to see! Photos of those coming soon in a separate post.

Here is some of the work on show at the Colchester stand:

Oh – and I nearly forgot the part that I enjoyed the most, which was looking at the visitors’ fashion choices!