Interning at London Fashion Week Daily Diary

London Fashion Week, the notoriously busy time on every fashion elite and design enthusiast’s calendar. You can walk just about anywhere around Covent Garden and be bombarded with promo guys and girls ushering bottles of water, leaflets and goody bags into your hands, hoping to attract buyers and press to the shows that await.

Caught up in the spirit of Fashion Week, I decided to bulk up my C.V a bit by interning for Vauxhall Fashion Scout whilst getting an insiders view of the preparation involved in producing a show.

Arriving into London on the Thursday morning, everything seemed surprisingly calm… perhaps this is due to not having my caffeine fix for the day yet, it was only 8.30am! I promptly made my way to my hotel, leaving my suitcase before running back to the tube to head to Freemasons Hall in Covent Garden to start my first day of the internship.

Little did I know, the first problem was just around the corner, how to actually get into the building? I saw a small collective of people who appeared to be waiting just around the corner of the building, so headed over in the hope they would be interning as well and were just as lost as I was.
Luckily, my judgement was right and we were swiftly met by a representative from Fashion Scout who led us inside the grand building.

The floors were tiled in a mosaic fashion, with marble staircases sloping in all directions. It truly looked like a scene from a movie, so luxurious and an utterly gorgeous venue to hold a fashion show. Making my way down the corridor, I spotted a huge line of other interns waiting outside a grand hall with massive wooden doors – this is where we were to receive our briefing for the week, and were split into teams of Front of House and Backstage interns.

I was extremely relieved to be allocated to the Front of House, as many horror stories of rude stylists and designers has tainted my view of becoming a dresser for the models. As the week progressed though, I learnt that this was not the case for every show… I guess there are just a few bad apples?

The first day was basically a short tour of the building, followed by moving stacks of boxes to different locations around the building and preparing the catwalk and goody bags for the busy Friday ahead.

Friday 19th February 2010

Got to Fashion scout at 12.00, late for fashion week I thought, but I’m not complaining! Was then assigned to direct visitors around the maze of a building, before organising the foyer and catwalk area for the approaching David Koma show. Rumours were that Hilary Alexander was to be in attendance, so when I saw her take her place on the front row in her blood red kimono tunic I was elated. Susie Lau from Style Bubble was also present.

The show was incredible! We only just packed everyone into the hall, and with everyone scrambling to get a peek at the high profile collection I was quite glad I could just stand back and watch from the sidelines. Zigzag designs were prominent features of the collection, which fused rather well with quite neutral tones of fawns and blacks. Also Koma’s use of what appeared to be zip teeth as detailing on cocktail dresses was pure genius. If I could afford, I would be snapping up one of these dresses within minutes, but sadly a student loan doesn’t tend to stretch that far.


Image courtesy of Asos.

The final highlight for the day has to be the Ones to Watch show, featuring 4 up-and-coming designers: Eudon Choi, David Longshawe, ASKH, and Florencia Kozuch. The majority of the buzz centered around Kozuch’s collection of loop knit sweaters teamed with wide brimmed parson’s hats, with people raving about the collection for much of the week!


Image courtesy of Vauxhall Fashion Scout.

Daily Rumours:

Nicola Roberts and Rachel Stevens at Body AMR.
Katy Perry rumoured to show…didn’t attend so designer took her seat and said ‘Oh well, her loss!’

LFW Vids... check them out.

Celeb spotting at LFW....

Who was spotted at Vauxhall Fashion Scout at LFW this feb?

Lets have a sneaky peek...

London Fashion Week, it's all happening at Vauxhall Fashion Scout!

Well, for the past week I have been somewhat absent from the blog as i've been interning with Vauxhall Fashion Scout for LFW, and my what a week it has been! Here are a few snaps of us interns hard at work preparing for shows, and be sure to keep an eye out for footage, photographs and diary entries from the week in the next few days!

Enjoy!

God bless Sophie Callé...

My goodness what a long week it has been, I have missed my social life so much, not to mention my Mac...am extremely thrilled to be back in contact with the world again, I swear by this time next fashion week Vodafone WILL give me a blackberry.

I forgot to mention this last week before I shot off for London Fashion Week, but I discovered the most amazing little (well, its actually not so little) book by Sophie Callé entitled 'Take care of yourself'. A rather interesting title would you not say?

Well, whilst flipping through the crisp yet almost transluscent pages of this book, I discovered that it was all centered around one significant moment in Ms. Callé's life - a letter she had received from a man, breaking up with her.

Now... this was no ordinary letter... no no no... it was kind of encrypted, so much so that if many people were to read it they would all have a different opinion and viewpoint of what the situation was. So, the author did just that and asked a selection of around 107 different women, from different professions and backgrounds to interpret this letter in their own style.

It was interesting to note that not everyone analysed this text in the same way. Some preferred to annotate and draw meaning from that, whereas some used the letter as inspiration for a piece of art. One person even used the letter to play a game of chess.

I have to say, I love this original method of creating a large piece of writing and it will certainly be something I am keen to take forward for use on '3rd Floor'.

Some images of the book: