Future Fashionistas

On Thursday night, I made my first trip back home from uni, after about four weeks; I was really missing London.

That's right, I missed the city. 'Family?', you ask? 

Nah bruv, I can speak to 'em anytime! Can't ring up the city every time I feel the need to stroll along the river.  

Alright, alright, I did miss my family and friends too. It was painful being in London for just a weekend, and not being able to see everyone that I missed. My whole life is there, it's physically impossible for me to see everyone. Sad face.

But on the up side, I did get to catch up with some of my fashionista girlies from my days at Central Saint Martins (a lifestyle I am completely missing too!!). On Saturday, the V&A were holding a Fashion Festival event, kind of like the one I went to last year, but for 16-24 year olds who wanted a career in fashion. 

What a day. 

I had so much fun and learnt so much from all the workshops and speakers that were there. Once of the most valuable talks for me was a talk by Asos, about fashion marketing and journalism. It was only after I sat down that I realised my entire outfit was in fact from Asos. Including my Mac! Subliminally keen or rather addicted to Asos... You decide!

Work by Charlotte Lucy Barry- Named one of the best fashion
graduates of 2011 by Vogue UK

Fashion Photography by Danny Balwin

Jane Bowler's latest collection.  Her work is so cool, she's known
for her exploration (and discovery) of diverse and exciting materials.

A dress I really love by Jane Bowler. It really shows off her passion
of transforming pretty typical everyday materials, plastic in this case.
I absolutely adore her range of textiles; very unique!

Pretty pretty fashion sketches 

We also got to listen to an interview with Henry Holland!!! Shame on you if of dont know who that is... House Of Holland, look them up. The interview was mainly about how he started his label, and a lot of the focus was on the fact that he didn't have anything to do with fashion when he founded his label. It really proved that you don't necessarily need to go to a fashion university, and the importance of having both connections and a sound level of business knowledge. He was so, SO cool! Super down-to-Earth and grounded, not at all arrogant, completely casual and jokey. 

Henry Holland. Again, he's so cool!

We also went to a fashion illustration workshop, run by Stuart Mckenzie (check out some of his work here) He does loads of magazine work,m particularly for Cosmopolitan (US) and used to so a lot of illustrations for Vivienne Westwood. He is currently a lecturer at CSM too.

Illustration Sketch by Stuart Mckenzie
Here's a tumbr link to a post about the workshop.

Sketches by Mckenzie

Some of my sketches from the workshop. Click here for some more. 

And we had an awesomely well fed lunch in the V&A cafeteria. Yum-my.

But my favourite part of the day was being able to catch up with my Fashion Jewellery course mates. These girls were who I ended up being closest with on my course so not being at uni with them kind of sucks. But I loved hearing about their course, the good and the bad. They're all doing Fashion Contour at LCF. 

The advice and insight we got was entirely priceless and I think we've all left with something to inspire our future fashion careers. 

To finish off, here are our outfits, because no fashion event blogging is complete without a few OOTDs!

I've already told you my whole outfit is from Asos, so no need to give you any more details on that. I'm wearing also wearing a necklace by Fallen Saint, because I recently went on a mad shopping spree from Fallen Saint, Oh My Love, Topshop, Asos (no surprises there) and various brands I found in Old Spitafields Market. All within the space of two weeks. WTF?! Anyways, here's what my necklace looks like.

Ma Girlies!