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!
It was really good meeting you there!
ReplyDeleteThanks Jai'me, you too!! Rena xoxo
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