INDUSTRY FOCUS: BRITISH FASHION

As a new fashion graduate, it's not always clear what paths are open. How do you continue to hold onto the dream of dressing the nation or styling the few, while having to survive and support yourself in the cold, competitive light of reality?

"Ultimately everybody finds their own way," offers Lulu Kennedy, project manager at Fashion East. "Some dive in headfirst andsee what happens, others get business adviceand plan everything out meticulously first. Others will do apprenticeships; build up connections in the industry. Different methods suit different personalities."

First, take what you know. Graduating from almost any fashion degree will leave you with a range of practical and design skills, from design, drawing and pattern-cutting to making a pocket someone can actually put their hand into.

Courses will also leave you with some commercial sense of the industry. It might not be glamorous, but an understanding of typical development cycles, production processes and supply chains are exactly the things more established designers and companies hope to shunt onto the little guy. That's you, for now.

And if you are hoping to start out on your own, you're gonna have to understand all of the above, or go on a pretty steep learning curve. "Honestly, I have no idea how young designers survive," marvels Hadley Freeman, Fashion Editor for The Guardian.

Even for someone on the lookout for new talent and trends, "it's extremely hard for new designers to get noticed. More often than not it's through personal recommendations, the Internet and a handful of boutiques around London championing young designers' work."

Whether starting out solo, scrabbling for junior positions in larger fashion houses or breaking into the fashion media, it really is about who you know. Sure, if you're Francesca Versace the fashion world might fawn at your feet, but for the rest of us the doors can open in much the same way that skilled labourers learned their trade a few decades back. Good old-fashioned apprenticeships.

"I don't really think I had a 'big break' into the industry," ponders Alexandra Suhner, a young lady doubling as a designer and editor of online fashion mag Trendsetters. "It was more a point of realisation: I had to keep moving forward in my career."

Sure, University teaches you a range of skills. It might even buy you time to figure out what to do with your life. But any creative industry relies mainly on your own ideas, personality and enthusiasm once you need to cut it in the real world.

"I was a student at La Chambre de la Couture Parisienne, and as part of my course had taken a six-month internship at Sonia Rykiel. At the end of it I was offered a junior design position and decided to take it for another two months, and then return to school," Alexandra recalls.

"However, at the end of it they offered me a permanent contract. Half my friends were telling me to go back to school - this opportunity would always be there. The other half told me to go for it. While I was deciding, one afternoon Sonia took the whole design team to lunch at Café Flore. It was then that I realised I didn't want to be back in stuffy classrooms making toiles; I wanted to be here - part of a design team at a luxury fashion house, doing lovely things like lunching out at Café Flore. I made the decision to stay and I can now confidently say it was one of the best I've made in my life." Suhner now has her own line of lingerie: State of Undress.

Realising someone else's vision isn't for everyone. If you're determined to make your own mark immediately, it's good to know that there are a wide range of bodies set up to help budding young designers.

Fashion East gives young designers an opportunity most wouldn't dream of. Each season the panel, made up of journalists and buyers including Vogue's Harriet Quick, B Store's Matthew Murphy and i-D's fashion team give three designers the chance to present a catwalk collection to international press and buyers.

It's all sat in the heart of East London in Brick Lane's Truman Brewery - a venue that since 1997 has hosted shows by Hussein Chalayan, Matthew Williamson, Maria Chenand and more. Supported by Topshop, eighty percent of Fashion East designers have been offered the chain's 'New Generation' sponsorship, going on to show independently the following season.

Such events are invaluable for self-exposure, but it's a cutthroat world - especially if you're a minnow among the sharks. Representation is half the battle: don't overlook how helpful it can be to have an equally cutthroat PR on your side. "I never underestimate my power, and how I can affect young designers' careers," shrugs Mandi Lennard.

She has an eclectic range of clients on herbooks, from Gareth Pugh to Uniqlo, Pop magazine to Treacle - a shop selling cupcakes. "A lot of PRs offer a free service to new designers," she can reveal. "They know it's a big break if a PR gets behind you."

For the more business-brained keen to strike out alone, the Prince's Trust offers grants to young entrepreneurs of all persuasions. "We try to give our loans to young people who have to overcome the greatest disadvantages," explains Alan Kimpton.

"But it's not just money. We will help them produce a business plan and if given a loan, provide an individual experienced business mentor as well as other specialist advice as required. It's not always about diving straight in, as a young designer you can design a limited collection for market research, for instance."

Of course, there's always Graduate Fashion Week. Supported by River Island and judged by Sophia Kokosalaki, British Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman and YSL's Stefano Pilati, the event hopes to pick out the best of the next generation of fashion elite - and that's not just the designers.

"Graduate Fashion Week is a totally new concept," declares organiser Fiona Cunningham. "It's four days of catwalk shows and exhibitions featuring the most innovative new fashion designers, illustrators, marketers, writers, textile and graphic designers, attended by headhunters and representatives from Hermes, Abercrombie & Fitch, Burberry, YSL and thousands of others."

Open to British graduates, it takes place in the first weekend of June each year and, while there is no financial support, it welcomes graduates to a strong network of supportive professionals eager to nurture the next generation.

"If you ask me, the only valuable fashion schools in the world are the British ones," Pilati was heard to say at the end of last year's event. "The pushing forward and edgy quality of British-trained designers defines a real fashion culture, full of creativity and very different from any others in Europe. It seems to me that they're the ones who enjoy the pure sense of fashion."

LINKS

www.gfw.org.uk
www.fashioneast.co.uk
www.iqons.com
www.trendsetters.com
www.princestrust.org.uk

Text: Serena Colteen
Photography: John Stewardson