Birmingham Graduate Fashion Week

Beginning June 7th, ten students from the Birmingham City University BA (Hons) Fashion Design program presented their collections at Graduate Fashion Week.

Graduate Fashion Week 2009 was held at Earls Courts in London and consisted of five days of events. This program was launched in 1991 as a forum to showcase the top BA Graduate fashion design talent in the UK.

The following students who partook from Birmingham City University were Vita Woods, Judy Zhang, Daisy Cope, Jamie Russon, Roxanna Skeates-Lodge, Stacey Haynes, Sarah Warner, Marios Antoniou, Minka Halstead and Daryl Phelps.

Roxanna Skeates-Lodge immersed her collection in magenta flowers. They adorned the models head, cuffs of their clothing and most notably a cropped full sleeve jacket. Hydrangeas gave the jacket a look fit for a springtime affair and balanced out the tailored cuffed coffee silk pants below.

The structure and pocket placement of Marios Antoniou’s menswear collection gave it a military theme. Broad shoulders on the twill jackets and tops gave these models a sense of purpose. All models had their feet tapped up around their arch as well as their fingers and wrists in white tape as to show they had traveled long and hard to get to what they had to conquer.

Jamie Russon (image seen at top) took a pallet of gray chunky wool knits and combined them with protruding plastic bubble wear. These bubbles went up and down the arms of jackets as to resemble what one would find as floaties in a swimming pool. The bubble wear was also seen in its entirety in vests, outlining the hoods of jackets and the cuffs on the bottom of garments. Steel gray cotton below the knee skirts and stir up pants rounded out the collection.

Stacey Haynes had a stand out collection. The rich orange silk scarves were draped effortlessly around the models neck and sometimes also covering their heads. In beautiful duality their platform heels were also draped in the same orange silk. Dark gray silk charmeuse comprised the wide leg bottoms as well as the leggings. Ice blue see through raincoats sparkled as they were layered over the stomach baring tops.

All though we applaud all of the student’s efforts, the eye catching collections of the Birmingham City University BA (Hons) Fashion Design program were Stacey Haynes, Roxanna Skeates-Lodge, and Jamie Russon for their use in fabric choice, color and innovative construction. Congratulations to all students who showed at Graduate Fashion Week.

-Oriana DiNella