The #RoadToFashionWeek begins! With our FAD Fashion Futures 2017 Summer School officially complete we have 20 garments all ready to be shown at London Fashion Week. With this amazing milestone for our finalists complete it’s time we gave you an insight into our final 20 young creatives and their garments to give you a taster of what to expect at London Fashion Week. Although the Summer School was super busy we quickly caught up with each of the finalists throughout the week.
For Day 11 of our ‘Road to Fashion Week’ we caught up with Sezuthi Islam. Sezuthi is 17 and studies at Valentines High School. She told us a little bit about her Fashion Futures journey and the garment she created.
Q: Tell me your stand out moment from Fashion Futures journey?
“I would say my stand out moment is the volunteers, they are really helpful. Not only do they help me they explain the skills they are using and also they are really nice, outgoing and friendly. It is an environment that you can easily fit in. At school you ask for help they give you a direction and you don’t really understand completely whereas here they actually show it to you and talk you through it.”
Q: Tell me your main inspirations and thoughts behind your garment
“It started when I went to the V&A in my own time and went to the European section. I saw lots of dresses that had corset on the waist and bodices then they went right out with puffy sleeves. So, I wanted to incorporate that into my design but I wanted a modern twist on the idea, I think today every garment has a modern twist. For example the choker used to be a historical aspect but now they’ve come back. So I thought why not do off the shoulder because it is very big trend right now, I wanted incorporate the corset into the garment structure.”
Q: What has Fashion Futures made you realise?
“That time management is really important and I am really bad at managing my time so it has helped me learn the best way to change this. Also it has showed me how important the process of coming to the idea is because usually I just have an idea and that it, but there are so many different types of research you need to do first like client, shop research.”
Q: What have you enjoyed overall about being part of the FAD team?
“Although this is a competition it doesn’t feel like a competition, we are all nice to each other and we support each other so it’s not like every man for themselves. It’s a really nice environment to work in.”
Q: What is your next step after Fashion Futures?
“I still have another year of sixth from where I study Biology, Psychology, Art, Spanish and Italian. So I don’t know what I’ll do after that, I have two options – one is a scientific path and one is an artistic path. So I’m not sure which one I will choose. I am looking into both options, if I went into fashion I would definitely be a designer because I am not very good at making. This has made me realise how many jobs there are into fashion.”
We want to say a massive thank you to our sponsors George and NatWest for making this amazing experience possible for our young creatives.
Thank you also to The Childhood Trust for having championed us in our Summer Give Campaign.