London College of Fashion students have collaborated with Diesel to takeover their flagship Covent Garden store with a unique concept spread across three floors.
London College of Fashion students have taken over Diesel Covent Garden until September 12.
Bethan Alexander, MA Fashion Retail Management course leader, managed the collaboration with students from MA Fashion Entrepreneurship and Innovation, MA Fashion Curation, MA Strategic Fashion Marketing and MA Fashion Media Production. The partnership is also part of Diesel’s ongoing commitment to foster young creativity.
The flagship takeover began on Thursday 11 August, and will run 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.
The winning design was chosen because it celebrated the history of Covent Garden and its famous flowers girls.
Diesel’s Artistic Director, Nicola Formichetti recently 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.”
The takeover will see all three floors interpreted around the students winning concept. Broken up into three unique parts, the store will house a flower market on the ground floor, flower crown tutorials on the first, sponsored by renowned florists Grace & Thorn. The lower ground floor will host a male grooming station & jazz band referencing the darker side of Covent Garden in the evening, incorporating themes of a Gentlemen’s club.
Students from the winning group included Eshaan Dhingra, Griselda Ibarra, Irene Rodriguez, Laksamee Jong, Maxime Laprade.
LCF News spoke to the students involved in the Diesel takeover to hear their thoughts on the collaboration.
Where did the takeover idea come from, and what did you create?
While researching for this project, we were really surprised to learn that Covent Garden used to be the London center for sex trade. We thought it was the best starting point to create a wow factor and to link the store to the area. We thus created a overall concept for the store interior, exterior and an IMC campaign for communication and launch event, doing our best to interpret the theme through the eye of the brand.
What have you learnt from working with Diesel, and did you enjoy the experience?
We enjoyed the experience very much! We learnt to work together as a team and discovered that variety can be powerful, as none of us came from the same background. One of the most amazing things is seeing our hard work become a reality. It was rewarding to work with an innovative brand that is open to ideas and responsive, which gave us the opportunity to experience an industry environment.
Bethan Alexander, Course Director of MA Fashion Retail Management, added: “Diesel were an amazing collaborative partner- enthusiastic, embracing and immersive with the students and faculty throughout the process. They provided an incredible learning opportunity over the 15 week partnership with the winning group not only flown off to Diesel HQ in Italy but to have their ideas brought to life for the entire month of August in store. It doesn’t get much better than that!”