Graduate Fashion Week 2005

Day One of Graduate Fashion Week 2005

I can't get over the slickness of it all. Arrived before 11am to find a subdued buzz about the immaculately well-organised venue. Exhibition stand staff were busy with final preparations but there was none of the dreaded fashion panic (like ordinary panic only with added headless chicken ) which usually precede these events. The press office was fully functioning with a full range of facilities by 11am. Tanya Shaw from Stephanie Churchill PR was at the helm, greeting press and photographers and organising passes. Refreshments, a plasma screen displaying live feeds from the two on-site catwalks, a bank of online computers, press releases and a couple of huge, comfy sofas. Is this really Graduate Fashion Week?

Into the custom-built auditorium for the first show and everything is efficient and hassle-free. Clear signs for the appropriate queues and polite staff to assist. A decent-sized platform for the photographers to shoot from and good lighting. The Surrey show started ten minutes later than scheduled and ran for 50 or so minutes. Long, but bursting with fantastic collections and examples of great styling. With 30 students showing the culmination of three years hard graft on less than a dozen outfits each, it is impossible to like everything that you see but the most impressive collections for me were: Natasha Wilding - marbled fabrics, burnt orange tops, baggy yet Edwardianesque womenswear; Quan Chi Phung - fine tailoring fused with bold pinstripes, drainpipes and soft grey overcoat with oversized pockets and Angelica Poole - switched on kidswear with over-stitched denim and old soldier and spy themes.

Only 550 or so of the thousands of students whose work contributes to Graduate Fashion Week, actually appears on the catwalks. The rest is found on the exhibition stands showing course work and projects from courses including: promotion, brand development, illustration, journalism, PR and marketing. This year the standard of the stands was exceedingly high. Somerset College displayed their students as seed packets, while the buzzing Surrey stand showed work on mannequins and made good use of video and computer screens. You could do with a full day just to get around the exhibition.

To escape all this full-on fashion, we headed beyond the cafe and bar into the River Island Garden. The high street chain which has evolved from the classic Chelsea Girl boutiques of the late 70s and early 80s, has signed a two year sponsorship deal. Complete with fake flamingos, a bar, sun chairs, windbreakers and sand, it's an oasis which looked really fantastic when the sun shone.

As well as handing out goody bags (containing job info, company info and bright fake flower chains), River Island staff invited visitors to put their hand into an air tombola and pull out a piece of paper to see if they'd won a money-off instore voucher. We didn't win anything.

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