Perfect Party Dress Competition

Last year, I came across ITV's Perfect Party Dress competition where the winner would have their design manufactured and sold in John Lewis over the Christmas period.

At this point, I had just moved to London and didn't have any of my drawing equipment so I sent in an old design and just changed some of the fabrics to fit the criteria. A few days later, I got a phone call from someone at ITV saying that I'd been shortlisted and if I was available for filming within the next 2 weeks!

I designed this about 3 years ago, I did it after a short course in learning how to use Adobe Illustrator and I wanted to try my hand at technical drawings. 

On the day of filming, I arrived at ITV studios in the morning and met the other 9 finalists, everyone was lovely but I had my eye on one guy, Stephen Arthur. He was the only male in the competition and he had no professional experience but he had a vision and passion - he actually ended up winning and is doing really well for himself! 

Anyway, the camera man took us onto Southbank and made us walk up and down, taking different shots. They ranged from 'serious' to 'we're all mates having a good time' to 'I like to wonder out into the distance contemplating life.' 

After filming, we met with a seamstress who discussed fabric and construction with us before presenting our designs to the judges. There were a few questions asked about my design - like why was the zip made a feature? is it going to be boned? All issues resolved and it was presentation time.

The judges were Amy Molyneaux and Percy Parker from PPQ, head of buying for womenswear at John Lewis and stylist Faye Sawyer from This Morning. We presented our work individually and were asked about inspiration, target market, construction, fabric choices etc. From what I could gather, my design was probably more Topshop than John Lewis...

Click here to watch the episode.

I sadly didn't get through, I would've loved to have seen my design made but that whole experience was really fun and at the end of the day, I was on national TV for about 10 seconds!

TADO collaboration

Time flies. This time last year, I was finishing off my Diploma in Creative Pattern Cutting.

I really enjoyed the final major project, I managed to secure myself a collaboration with the world famous illustrators TADO. I met Mike and Katie at a Sheffield party and told them about the course and my interests. The next day, I doodled a few outfits and sheepishly emailed them with a proposal about a potential collaboration… a few days later, I got an email saying they were extremely interested and designed a repeat print for me. Lesson learnt - you don't ask, you don't get!

Sketch and proposal I sent to TADO

TADO have worked for some big brands such as Gola, MTV and Vodafone. I was so excited about working with them, we emailed back and forth with garment ideas and prints ideas for a few weeks before finally settling on a final print and style for the collection. 

The concept of the project was heavily inspired by one of our tutors, a bespoke tailor who worked on Saville Row, Karl Matthews. He was infectious with his talks and I wanted to combine the playfulness of TADO with the accuracy and precision used in tailoring. It just seemed like a waste not to utilise his skills during my short time at the college. 

I ended up making three outfits from the line up. Standard blood, sweat and tears went into the making process. I was really happy with the end result, I mixed the TADO print with gingham fabric, added a few studs and got a couple of t-shirts printed up to finish off the collection.

There was a fashion show with the college but the images didn't turn out very well so here I am taking selfies. I should organise a photoshoot for these outfits...

Graduate Fashion Week

I can’t believe it’s Graduate Fashion Week already. I remember when I was a tired-eyed, caffeine fuelled, sleep deprived student frantically sewing, fitting and styling my final major project ready for my debut in Earl’s Court. It’s hard to believe that there’s been 4 lots of graduates since I was there… 4 years since I’ve graduated from my Bachelors Degree in Fashion Design from Manchester School of Art.

I loved my final year project, design and create 6 outfits from scratch. I specialised in young woven womenswear (original, I know) I based my collection around a roll of fabric I found in a small store in Sheffield. It was a large sequinned, dip-dyed fabric – I loved the colours, midnight blue with a touch of purples. I wanted to create a collection that was fun for women to wear.