Cutting edge while cutting costs
Updated on 08 July 2009
Samira Ahmed reflects on meeting the UK's design schools class of 2009, who are facing the pressures of recession in one of the toughest years to be a graduate.
When I got married 13 years ago, my dressmaker suggested I buy a beautiful green chiffon coat - exactly the same shade - to wear over the wedding outfit she had made for me. She had just bought the coat from a graduate at a degree show.
I never asked the student's name, or how much my dressmaker had paid for it.
But seeing the thousands of young graduates setting up for the annual Young Designers' Fair at the Business Design Centre in Islington, I was wishing I had, and was struck by the dilemma for every year's graduating class.
Here they all were at their creative peak, brimming with wonderful ideas and desperate to get that first foothold on the career ladder: the competition for work, compounded by the recession.
There is a terrible temptation to offer yourself for free, despite all the last minute advice I could see being given by tutors on how to engage prospective buyers and "close the sale".
So when a world famous model wants one of your jackets, how much do you sell it for? Hayley Scanlan, who I interviewed in my report, has just faced that tricky question.
Freshly graduated with a BA Honours in Textile Design from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design in Dundee, she told me Erin O'Connor (you'd recognise her as the particularly tall and elegant presence in the M&S campaign) had commissioned a leather jacket, embellished with metal pieces and embroidery.
How much did she decide to charge for it? Nothing, it turned out. Certainly the kudos of having a top model wear your graduate collection is theoretically worth a fortune and that was clearly Hayley's thought through decision.
I don't know if Erin O'Connor will make a payment anyway, but I would certainly like to think so. It is one thing big design houses giving their jewels and gowns for free to actresses on award red carpets, but quite another when you are a student, spending money and time on expensive materials and tailoring.
While there is a renewed interest in traditional British values of workmanship and craft, paying for young people's talent seems an important statement in these tough economic times.
Nicola Redmore, head of the Textile Designs course at Huddersfield University, said it was important for politicians, financiers and big businesses to protect domestic industry. Her students showed an admirable knowledge and technical ability in traditional British weaving and tailoring fabrics.
If there is a political message to take away after revelling in all the beautiful objects on display at the show, its that if we value British jobs, British goods and British brands, then it is important to pay to support the people who design and make them at their most vulnerable start of their careers.
And if nothing else, amid the economic gloom, it makes quite a change for a cynical journalist to feel the optimism among the graduating class of 2009.
