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I’m Elinor Renfrew, the course director at Kingston University for
Fashion BA.
It’s a world renowned course and it’s world
renowned because of its destinations and the students that we have here go
into industry
and are some of the best designers in the world.
The course is three years
and it is fashion design
and we’re one of the few courses in the UK that only offer fashion design
and our students go on to work as designers but it maybe that they go on
to be stylists, they may go on to be illustrators, they may go on to
be in PR but predominantly they’re design students
and I’m here sitting in the third year studio and you can see behind me the students
working on their collections. The course is very much about portfolio,
it’s well known for that and Kingston wins awards for portfolio
and for illustration.
Every year in any national competition the students at Kingston are
up there with the winners.
We’re a sponsored course at Kingston which makes us quite unique.
We are sponsored by large American companies, Banana Republic,
Brooks Brothers
Brothers and in the UK we have companies such as John Smedley Knitwear,
French Connection and we also have
Topman
and a trend forecasting company called Studio M
and they work with us, with the students to sponsor projects with
competitions exclusively for Kingston.
The students from these competitions win some
amazing places and they go on paid internships to
New York and they go to Brooks Brothers
and Banana Republic over the summer
and every year we send about
five students out there and
we now have a new sponsor, Old Navy which is San Francisco
and these are exclusively to Kingston.
In addition we do enter other competitions through the British Pastoral Council
and every year
students from Kingston
win awards
and win positions,
internships, placements
at the companies.
We are studio based here and all the students work very much together,
they support
each other,
although they all work in their own areas,
they all know each other, we’re one campus, we’re one site and there’s a real community and
I think that’s one of the things that we pride ourselves
is the fact the students are proud to be here, the staff enjoy working
with the students, we all work very much as
a community here.
When they leave the students then come back and want to work with our
fashion students from Kingston
so they will go on
and work in the industry alongside
graduates from here.
If you look at the companies all over the world,
most of the design companies in the world
will have Kingston students as their design directors within the
design team.
the UK we have companies like All Saints,
Religion,
Paul Smith, there are quite a few companies which are actually
mostly graduates in the design team
and also abroad H&M, Zara,
Abercrombie and Fitch in America
and Zara in Spain.
When we are looking
for
students to come here, we’re looking for students who
can innovate, that are creative,
hard working, it’s a tough course, it’s very very tough here but
they have a lot of staff contact time,
high expectations
and working within peer groups who have high standards,
so we’re looking for creativity, but we’re also looking for students that are completely
dedicated and really want to get a career in fashion
and want to be successful.
They are competitive as well as being supportive
because they realise the industry is getting smaller
and there are more students leaving.
If you come to Kingston, I think it will probably be one of the best
experiences you will get
because we are part of a design school and we work closely within
the design school, 3D design and 2D design so students get the opportunity to work
with Communication Design students, they get to see
students from Product Design,
Architecture, Fine Art, they are all in the same building.
We do collaborative projects within the studio with just fashion where
students will work on a group project on a trend
for a company in London
and from that they will get a paid internship for the best ones from the group,
they will work on styling, they will work on
all sorts of things to do with trend forecasting which is quite different
from design, that’s the only group project we do.
When it comes to third year, they focus very much on collections
and portfolio
and throughout the three years it’s portfolio, 2D design and 3D design
and the understanding of taking
2D design into 3D design,
it’s all about working on the body, understanding the body from drawing the
body, fashion illustration, toiling, cutting for
different silhouettes and really trying to be quite extreme in what they
want to do but also
never forgetting that it needs to end up in a store and somebody needs to
buy it.
We encourage as much creativity across three levels but professionalism
is the one thing that our students are known for.
We also run a professional practice module
and that one
is we work again closely with industry and we bring in designers who
will have their own practice
including Sophie Hulme who is a graduate of Kingston, very successful
graduate from 2007
will come in and brief the students, they will do a project and
from that project
they will then produce
work in order to gain a place,
with their CV, with their cover letter
so it’s a very
professional package
and this helps them when they come to third year
and they find their own company to work with.
This year we’ve had
some very successful
outcomes for that project where third years
have secured projects with Lanvin,
Miu Miu, Armani, so it’s global
and that really sets them up for when they leave.
So the whole time at Kingston is about linking with industry without losing
creativity because that’s what they are looking for, they come to Kingston for
creativity before anything else but also
I’m told time and time again that our students are very employable, they take it
seriously and they are a huge asset in the
work place
as interns but also when they graduate.
We also do trips, next week we’ve got first years going out to New York and
they will visit the sponsors so go to the studios and see the kind of companies
that they will be working for projects in second year so everything
is integrated.
The staff I have here are very dedicated and they are very varied,
they all have their own businesses,
I’m the only full time member of staff
but I do that because I want to bring in people who are already out in the industry
to bring in designers running their own labels
to bring in that expertise into the department whether it’s knitwear,
whether it’s accessories, whether it’s menswear,
that expertise comes back into the
department and the staff are very very generous with their time
with the students and with the sources and resources,
it’s a complete packages here but it’s a partnership and it’s only going to work
if you
are dedicated and you want to be here
and we have a very high
retention, we have very few students leaving Kingston,
they want to be here,
they want to be part of the whole
experience and
I think of all the colleges and courses that I know, I think we offer
a very diverse, creative and
altogether professional package to any student who would like to
apply to Kingston.