Textiles students at Clothes Show Live

Year 9 Textiles students enjoyed an inspirational day on Monday 7 December at Clothes Show Live, at the Birmingham NEC. On arrival the girls went to the Image Catwalk, which featured trend presentations, high street collections and graduates from a range of top universities around the country who were showing their final collections. Over 30 colleges and universities exhibited graduates’ work and our students took the opportunity to meet lecturers and ask questions about different courses and career paths related to fashion.

Joey Essex (known for appearances on the ITV2 programme, The Only Way Is Essex) was the special guest on Monday at the Image Catwalk, and was presenting his brand, Fusey, during the event. The Olympus Pen Style Studio, hosted by fashion journalist Hilary Alexander OBE, showed the latest Autumn/Winter 2015 trends from James Kelly’s collection.

Coinciding with the Fashion and Textile Museum’s current exhibition Liberty in Fashion, the museum hosted a series of workshops which our students participated in. The exhibits showed how dressmaking has changed since the 1950s and why these skills are on the rise again.

Next the girls made their way to the main event, the fashion show at the Alcatel Fashion theatre, which was the highlight of the trip. The fashion show was hosted by Jamie Laing (of channel E4 Made in Chelsea fame) with X Factor finalists 4th Impact providing musical accompaniment. The 40 minute show featured the latest catwalk fashions and leading high street and designer collections including: the Glam Rock collection from River Island; Embellishment from Oasis; and Metallics from New Look. The 40 dancers and models performed in many different outfits based on themes such as ‘water’, ‘red’, ‘white’ and ‘black’, combining drama, emotion and cutting-edge fashion. This gave students great ideas for our own fashion show, to be held in April 2016.