Central Saint Martin's Late at the British Library

Fashion school has brought about an explosion of opportunity for attending events and meeting new faces. Case in point was Central Saint Martin’s event Late at the Library at the beginning of this month. The British Library has a huge fashion archive and it was done as a way to encourage students to come and use the facilities at their disposal. There were DJs and drinks, photo booths and print-making stands to tempt us in, and publishers and bookshops had stalls to promote their wares.

The Journalism BA students had put together a fantastic display of their favourite magazine covers, like Spare Rib and the Vogue "Reconstruction Issue" from 1945. There was the cover of Woman's World from when Oscar Wilde was editor, as well as Egoiste and Garage. I attended a talk by Dylan Jones, editor of GQ magazine and Chairman of London Collections: Men where he spoke about the need to be ferociously confident in your approach to getting work experience. He also slated Google as the lazy approach to research; “the internet is so brilliant for so many different things, but a lot of the time in research, you end up in exactly the same place because that’s all there is.”

Right in line with the ethos of his setting, he encouraged students to reconsider the physical experience of researching with books, even with the possibility that you might be side tracked with the wealth of information on offer: “being side tracked is part of the joy and part of the success of writing” he said. For Jones, it is the quality of your research that brings about high standards in your writing. For him, GQ is one of the last serious, long-forms of journalism, and with that comes a more old school approach to doing things.

To finish off the night, there was a fashion show by students using the escalators as runway. I got chatting to Jai’me Jan, better known as Jai’me London Boy of Boy Meets Fashion. For Jai’me, events like these are where new talent can be spotted early on: ““What I love about going to events like this is actually seeing the amount of creativity in emerging designers, who are the future of our fashion industry” he said. What’s more, you never know who you’re going to meet: “basically, it’s the perfect way to network with people who actually work in the fashion industry.” Cheers to that!