Budding designers to work with top fashion brand

Second year commercial design students at West Nottinghamshire College have kick-started a live project with a top fashion brand following a fact-finding visit to Manchester.

The budding designers are going to be working with fashion brand AllSaints to develop a proposal for a store layout, a fashion garment or accessory or a marketing campaign for the brand.

AllSaints was founded in 1994 and and has over 70 outlets in the UK and many stores worldwide.

Students visited the brand’s Arndale store, which was their first concept shop in the UK, to meet with the store manager who explained how the concept store differs from all others.

Students spoke with the store manager and learnt how the concept store differs from other stores. The group took a call with Krystyna Wood who is the learning and development co-ordinator at AllSaints Head Office. Krystyna was on hand to answer students’ questions and inform them about the brand’s future direction.

Fashion, textiles and art teacher Leanne Wilkins said: “It's great to see students engaging with a live client and see all the hard work in previous projects that has allowed them to tackle such a big live brief with ease.

“The group approached the call with AllSaints with great professionalism and have already begun to pull together strong research into the brand and project theme. I’m very proud, if not slightly envious, to see the group working with a brand that has worldwide fame and recognition.”

As well as the visit to AllSaints students visited Manchester’s Science and Industry Museum where they learnt about the industrial heritage of the city and the connections to the textiles industry.

As part of the primary research into the city, students took photographs of the mixture of traditional and contemporary architecture. 

Student Nikole Voitova said: “The Manchester trip was a great experience from my perspective. I enjoyed seeing the architecture and took pictures for inspiration including in the beautiful Manchester Cathedral.

“It was great to visit the AllSaints concept store and meeting the lovely staff who answered our questions. I have so many ideas running through my head which makes me more excited for this new project.”