On the 19th May 2015, Shannon Diment and I embarked on our final end-of-year university project, deciding to plan the Solent Graduate Fashion Show. I quickly realised what we’d got ourselves into when we started to look at the jobs we needed to do to make the show a success – finding a venue, sourcing sponsors, goodie bags, catering – then there was the marketing, the graphics and overall feel of the event, the show programme, the build up and break down, sourcing a catwalk, models and music, – all whilst working to the universities policies and a strict budget. Oh, and we had to get people to actually buy tickets and attend too! The list was endless but we were so excited to try our hand at something different and make it our own.
Although a little daunting at first, we quickly got the hang of the hoops we had to jump through to bring our vision to life. We sourced a venue Southampton Football Club, and sponsors including Hotel Chocolat, The Body Shop, Bobbi Brown Cosmetics, Crabtree and Evelyn, Propercorn and Pop Chips. We also worked with local businesses including Shrimp and Burger, Orange Rooms, Halladays Tearooms, Envy LKB, Chalk Valley, DBP Events and Revolution Bars. All our sponsors donated fantastic prizes to our raffle and goodie bags too.
We quickly realised the sort of event we wanted to create –we wanted it to be exclusive, glamorous and beneficial to all of the design students. Naturally this meant careful budgeting and planning, but also applying the right marketing and inviting the right people. I dipped into my little black book of contacts and invited a host of industry professionals that I’d met throughout my degree. With Bobbi Brown agreeing to create the make-up look, we did some behind-the-scenes filming of our photoshoot for the programme to get everyone excited. You can see the final film on my Twitter here.
Whilst my role was focused on the marketing and creative, Shannon dealt with the operations and logistics, and this made for a great partnership. We were actually so sad when it ended, and wondered what we would do with all our spare time! Here’s a few images from the show..
