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 20 of our ‘Road to Fashion Week’ we caught up with Victoria Olejniczak. Victoria is ?? and studies at Graveney 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 think the presentation was definitely my biggest moment because I wasn’t too sure about how other people would take my design and I didn’t think I would get through. Speaking and explaining my ideas to other people is quite difficult to me, so when I stood there in front of all the judges and expressed my ideas and how I got to where I am. Just the look on their faces it just made me really happy and I really felt proud of myself in that moment’
Q: Tell me your main inspirations and thoughts behind your garment
So, when they told us that the brief was European` influencers it was quite easy for me straight away to design something and think of a design because I’m from Poland and I was born there and my whole family are from there. I got to talk to my parents about different traditional outfits and things like that, but at the same time I wanted to make it more modern and I was experimenting with pleats at the time so I just mashed it all together and I came out with this. I’ve never made a coat before so it was a bit of a challenge – something new.
Q: What has Fashion Futures made you realise?
‘It’s been hard to fit this alongside my other studies but I was really determined to get through to the final and come here this week and make my garment, so I made it work.’
‘Fashion Futures has made me realise that I can do anything I want, so anything I think of I can transfer it into my design and I don’t have to worry about what other people think, as long as I like it and as long as it appeals to certain people or fits the brief then its good. Yeah, it’s just let me be more free and creative with what I do because before I used to be really into refined drawing and things like that but now I’m a bit more out there.’
Q: What have you enjoyed overall about being part of the FAD team?
‘Meeting all the people, it’s been lovely meeting everyone with the same interests as you, who are there to help you and you can help them – it’s just been such a great experience. Everything about it has been great and being able to talk about fashion and textiles, it’s just been really nice and everyone has their say. It’s amazing how many volunteers have come and helped us. A lot of the volunteers have spoken to us about where they went to university and things like that so it’s helped me a lot to plan my future. I’m going to miss it so much.
Q: What is your next step after Fashion Futures?
‘Ever since I was a little kid, my parents would give me a pencil and paper and I would just draw. Art has been my favourite subject since primary school and I’ve continued that through my whole life basicallyI’ve still got a year left of college, so I’m going to continue doing art and fashion there and then I’m hoping that after year 13 I’m going to do an art foundation but probably fashion textiles based. I would love to do that Central Saint Martins, but afterwards I would either stay there if I can or I’ll go to somewhere like Westminster to study 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.
