2016 has seen London College of Fashion and our students collaborate with multiple different brands, organisations, and companies from almost every discipline. From illustration at Apple Regents Street to design students worked with H&M to a takeover Diesel’s flagship store over the summer… it’s been a busy year! Here are some of the industry project and collaboration highlights of the past year.
LCF students collaborated with Diesel and took over their flagship Covent Garden store with a unique concept spread across three floors. The flagship takeover began on Thursday 11 August and ran until 12 September. Diesel worked with several student groups before picking the final design. The winning design celebrates the history of Covent Garden and the flowers girls that made it famous. The winning group was made up of Eshaan Dhingra, Griselda Ibarra, Irene Rodriguez, Laksamee Jong, Maxime Laprade.
Diesel’s Artistic Director, Nicola Formichetti commented on the collaboration, “I am really proud to be able to support young creatives from many different horizons through the takeover of Diesel’s London Covent Garden flagship store by the students of London College of Fashion. Supporting young talent and fostering creativity is something very dear to me and to Diesel. It is by supporting those new talents that we are helping create the creative minds of tomorrow.”
Creative Director for the School of Design and Technology Rob Phillips and BA (Hons) Fashion Illustration course leader Sue Dray were joined by LCF student Holly Farmer, to deliver an illustration workshop on the new iPad Pro and Pencil at Apple’s head office in London. They presented their expertise and experience of illustrating using the latest iPad apps, to a number of UK editors, bloggers, and freelancers. .
London College of Fashion worked with Apple again in October. BA (Hons) Fashion Illustration course leader Sue Dray was joined by three LCF students to deliver an iPad illustration workshop, coinciding with the relaunch the Apple Store on Regent Street, as part of their event series, #TodayAtApple.
Sue spoke to the audience about her career in fashion illustration, followed by a short lesson on using iPads to illustrate. The audience were invited to illustrate two live models, with the help of three students from BA (Hons) Fashion Illustration – Amy Twiner, Megan Underwood, and Darcey Hymanson. Sue and the students showed their work and the techniques they use when illustrating on iPads.
BSc (Hons) Fashion Management (replacing BA (Hons) Fashion Management) students worked on an industry project with east London’s Spitalfields market. Course leader, James Clark, asked his students to create independent companies or labels to sell goods at Spitalfields for their end of year project.
The group of students designed and produced garments, bags, jewellery and bespoke handmade chokers amongst many other items for the collaboration. LCF students took over the busy market’s east-wing on a Thursday and Friday and were independently driving sales against some of the more established traders.
BA (Hons) Fashion Design and Development students worked on an industry project with Not Just A Label to create different collections and marketing materials for a specific audience – young Korean women in their early to mid 20’s.
The students worked in groups and were asked to create one garment each for a group collection. They were asked to create garments with a specific consumer demographic in mind. NJAL asked them to create a collection for young Korean women in their early to mid 20’s. They were also told the consumer likes celebrities in her country, such as club kids and pop singers. The consumer loves bright colours, avant-garde styles and is adventurous with materials and prints.
We spoke to Anna Telcs, Not Just A Label partner involved in the collaboration, to find out how the project went.
The students worked in groups of 12 to create brands, a collection and marketing materials. NJAL was excited to work with LCF in such a hands-on way, to offer feedback in all aspects throughout the design and branding processes. The students were tasked with collaboratively creating a brand, a collection and marketing material to follow customer profiles offered from NJAL.
The students did a fantastic job working together (a tall order to be sure), creating their brands and unifying their message to create compelling designs that truly respected the design brief from Not Just A Label. NJAL’s e-commerce and digital marketing teams were very impressed with the level of finished work presented by the student collaborations. We look forward to engaging with LCF’s talent in the future.Read the full story here.
For the second year running, the Centre for Sustainable Fashion at LCF collaborated with H&M, in a project involving LCF students exploring the concept of circularity. Thirty-three teams of students from BA (Hons) Fashion Design & Technology Womenswear and BA (Hons) Fashion Jewellery were challenged with designing capsule womenswear collections, using garments and materials provided through H&M’s in-store garment collecting scheme.
The eight winning collections were selected by an expert panel of judges including; Dilys Williams – Director of the Centre for Sustainable Fashion at LCF, Orsola de Castro – designer & campaigner, Shee Fun Chan – Course Leader, London College of Fashion & Catarina Midby – H&M UK & IE Sustainability Manager, and are on display in H&M stores across London.
Enterprising students from a variety of courses at London College of Fashion collaborated with students from BSc (Hons) IT Framework at London South Bank University on an event called Elevate @ LCF, to help them upscale their websites and develop their businesses. The event brought together creative and technical skill sets to develop practical business ideas, collaboration and networking opportunities, with prizes for the most successful ideas.
The event began with a round of ‘speed networking’ between LCF and LSBU and within a short space of time students had self-selected into groups based on compatibility and personalities. Such small groups allowed great exposure to the technical skills of the IT Framework students, who were able to critique and develop creative ideas from the Fashion Business School.
The overall winners were Laura Salisbury from LCF and Avvaiganeshan Kanagasabe from LSBU, with their idea of an app to generate an online presence for garment fastening concepts, which test today’s making/manufacturing processes. They received a prize and the trophies on behalf of each College and were crowned the first ever ‘Elevate Champions’.
To celebrate 15 years of Cosmetic Science teaching, London College of Fashion hosted LCF Formulates, a pop up cosmetic science lab that invited the public to go behind the scenes of the beauty industry. The exhibition was curated by fragrance journalist and author Odette Toilette and hosted by students studying MSc Cosmetic Science, part of LCF’s Fashion Business School.
Fashion Business Summit 16 was an interactive exhibition and series of events to showcase the pioneering work of London College of Fashion business students. Final year undergraduate, postgraduate, and Executive MBA students from across a variety of business, management and science disciplines came together to explore the themes of transparent environments, kinetic cultures, evolving innovation, disruptive enterprise, and connected societies.
A big thank you to all of our industry partners and supporters who offer the students invaluable opportunities and experience. We look forward to working with you in 2017.
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