CANDI students progress to Fashion Futures final

Five City and Islington College students have been listed as finalists for the Fashion Futures Summer School 2019, an opportunity organised by young people’s charity Fashion Awareness Direct (F.A.D).

F.A.D is an educational charity that provides young people with the skills and experience to succeed in the fashion industry. Since 2005, the organisation has run their Fashion Futures programme, helping to “foster key professional skills” ahead of the London Fashion Week final in September.

Alumni of the programme have gone on to work at brands such as Tom Ford, River Island and Fila.

Over the last decade, City and Islington College has built a strong relationship with the charity, many students passing through its programme and going on to success in the industry. CANDI alumni Philip Luu and Clara Clarke Osbourne have since gone on to work for the charity itself. Subject Leader for Textiles at City and Islington, Dionne Sparks, tells us that this year has been extraordinarily successful for the college, however, with a record number of student finalists.

“F.A.D is an incredible, vibrant organisation that offers fantastic opportunities to young people. We have been working with them for years and our students who take part in the Fashion Futures project gain great skills and networking opportunities.

“They grow in confidence, become ambitious in their goals and gain great research, technical, communication and presentation skills. Their experience really complements and enhances their work on the A Level Textiles course at CANDI, and the expertise they gain filters through to other students on our course.”

Nine CANDI students were initially selected for this year’s programme, which ran from January to March and offered 70 talented young Londoners the opportunity to spend their Saturday mornings with F.A.D’s specialist tutors and industry mentors. They spent their weekends learning the fundamentals of fashion, and preparing a portfolio to present to a panel of industry experts, who selected the 20 most promising participants to progress onto the final part of the programme.

The panel chose five CANDI Sixth Form College students to join the other finalists in F.A.D’s Fashion Futures Summer School, where they will now prepare garments for exhibition in September at a professional London Fashion Week catwalk at Fashion Scout.

Creative Director of Fashion Awareness Direct, Joanne Matthews, said of the students: “The students from City & Islington are hard-working and committed – they have been open to new concepts and ideas, and they have developed new fashion industry skills.

“The CANDI students have taken diverse creative approaches to the project brief, HumaNature, and have generated innovative design proposals which reflect their individuality and personal design identities. We’re excited to see the garments they’ll produce for the runway in September.”

Sixth Form Centre students Ana Sofia Rodríguez Fajardo, Mariamawit Hailemichael Teshome, Alicia Vetrano, Maria Joao Fernandes Silva and Allainah Berry are expected to now develop their drafts into complete garments for final presentation at the London Fashion Week.

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