The adrenaline that you get from when you're sending the girls or boys out on the catwalk
in your clothes is incredibly exciting.
Hello I'm Vic and I study Fashion at Kingston University.
Last week we had a great opportunity to showcase our first collection at Graduate Fashion Week
on the catwalk.
It was definitely a lot of hard work to get to that point but I think it was a really
nice end to what was a really challenging but fulfilling three years of studying.
One of the good things about Kingston is that it is part of Graduate Fashion Week and I
think that was definitely one of my incentives when I was thinking about where I wanted to
go.
Graduate Fashion Week obviously got a lot of hype around it.
It gets a lot of exposure, it gets in a lot of magazines and there is a selection process
to get into Graduate Fashion Week and luckily I was selected to have my work on the catwalk.
And I feature in the Times Newspaper the day after Graduate Fashion Week which is a really
nice thing to have as an ending to the course because it was just so nice to be able to
see that there were people outside of the university, looking at our work, that it's
not just there to be marked, to get a grade, it's actually about sparking the imagination
of someone who might want to actually employ you.
One of the reasons why I came here is when I looked at the work that I seen people had
been doing, there was so much drawing, and so much expression, and a lot of freedom in
the designing.
So when I was looking around and choosing which place to go, I thought Kingston actually
offered in between stages from like doing all these crazy ideas and actually channelling
them into something that was, you know, a wearable garment that was fit to be sold in
the future.
One of the key skills for coming here and something that you should love to do and practice
anyway is drawing; that's something that's really important and I think most people who
are actually interested in Fashion want to be drawing things, they're drawing people,
they're drawing what's around you, it's a good way to express your ideas.
I started doing a lot of illustration alongside my practice, which led for me to be recognised
as doing proper illustrations out in the fashion world, alongside the degree, which was actually
quite good in terms of my course because it put things into proportion; it also excelled
my work in university because I was doing illustration as well.
The atmosphere actually in the studio has been amazing since the beginning.
Our studio's always a really productive place to be, everyone respects each others space.
We have enough facilities for everyone.
There's a lot of 3D experimentation as well and you get to grasp a lot of skills, but
because obviously there are a lot of technical skills to get with making clothes, I mean
it is a challenge to learn, but it doesn't feel sort of a laborious thing, it feels like
very natural to be able to pick up these skills to turn your creative ideas into something
real.
I don't think you could ever say there was a sort of typical Kingston student, knowing
all my classmates and things like that, I just know how different we all are.
Kingston has great connections with the Industry.
Throughout the time that I've been here we've always had industry-based projects.
So we are taught, I think, to actually have skills for a job at Graduation, and I think
being at Kingston, especially on the Fashion course, you feel quite well-equipped for the
industry.
We had a design project for Old Navy, in California, San Francisco and that was very, sort of,
drawing based project and I just really went for it, and we won a ten week internship in
San Francisco, which was sort of a proper Design Work Placement that was part of the
university.
As well as that we had a really cool project with the British Fashion Council, which was
for Nicole Farhi.
I was a finalist out of the universities, in that project which meant that I was interviewed
with Nicole Farhi and Caroline Rush and Anne Tyrrell who are the Heads of British Fashion
Council.
The great thing about Kingston is that it really embraces your individuality and I think
one of the main feedbacks that we got at Graduate Fashion Week was how unique everyones' portfolio
was, because you know, they were all trained for these very Industry projects, everyone
had something different to show and had totally different interpretations but all equally
as successful, so that was a really positive thing to know that it does generate really
diverse students.
It's been such an enjoyable experience and to know how much we've all achieved and I
know the achievements I've had from Kingston, I don't, I really don't think I would have
found, had I not been here.