Young fashionistas turn on the style

TEXTILES students often dream of fashioning a career in the creative industries.
So Warrington’s Priestley College gave its young fashionistas their first experience of creating a brand, making their own clothes and producing a marketing strategy to help them sell.
Two industry experts were then brought in to meet the students and discuss their ideas and offer feedback.
Louise Trasatti, a senior lecturer in fashion promotion at UCLan, praised their achievements even saying one – DeLuxe – “could launch tomorrow”.
She told Melanie McConnell and Kate Stockman: “It has the potential to be an iconic brand.”
Tutors at Priestley challenged the BTEC Fashion and Textiles students to create their own label complete with logo and photography in time for the final presentation to the UCLan lecturers.
Louise and fashion design lecturer Jenny Loram-Spring scrutinised all the brands, asked questions and gave feedback.
Jenny said: “We’ve been so impressed by the variety of their ideas as well as the students’ grasp on everything from using Photoshop to how they would use influencers to sell their clothes.”
Among the ideas put forward were a fashion line called Kay Nove that also provided matching clothes for the buyer’s dogs.
DeLuxe was a high-end brand that allowed buyers to select their own colour palette so that friends can go out in similar outfits, but with their own twist on the clothes.
Former Lymm High School pupil Charlotte Leigh and Clara Romero Collins, who previously studied in Spain, created Widdershin – a word for anti-clockwise, representing how their customers like to go against the grain.
“We combined aspects of nature and culture in our designs,” said Charlotte, who hopes to study theatre costume design at university.
Clara added: “I was thinking of going into a career in interiors, but working on this brief has made me think I might study fashion.
“It was so much fun doing the research and looking into all parts of creating a brand.”