Right Place, Right Time

The day before I started my degree at Westminster I was lucky enough to be hired to dress models at the Richard Nicholl S/S 2012 collection at London Fashion week. I had never even been backstage at a show, let alone dressed two models in clothing that had never been seen by the public before but that would soon be all over the internet. It just so happened that this is one of my favourite collection of LFW, though I may be biased. The digital prints, transparent hooped skirts and pastel blue and violet colour scheme worked brilliantly together, which made it all the more nerve racking to do my job.

The lucky part is that my first ever fashion project was to take photos at LFW. It would have been extremely daunting, before that week, to be told I had to somehow get backstage at shows, take pictures and interview models. However, I had done this just the day before, so armed with my new skills I set off with a couple of friends to explore and report.

We were rather disheartened to find that Somerset House was swarming with students from our course and other London fashion degrees. So it was difficult to find the hidden style gems. But this is when luck (and a bit of that pushy fashion student nature) struck again... Whilst standing outside the Mark Fast show, hoping to catch a glimpse of a famous model and deliberating on how we could get backstage we overheard a someone who needed more volunteers to fill the gift bags. So we offered our services as eager fashion junkies and it worked! We were backstage for 3 hours! Saw the runway, saw the designers, models, make-up artists and watched as the show was frantically created. We couldn't believe our luck and I am so grateful for the opportunity.

My final gift from the fashion gods was dressing models at the Alice Temperley show which was situated in The British Museum. Due to some complicated headscarves, infinitely fragile formal wear and my friends model who arrive only minutes before the show started, it was the most beautiful, nerve-racking and educational thing I have done so far.

I dressed this model: