Week 4 Fashion Entrepreneurs at Adult College of Barking and Dagenham.

The students are certainly surpassing themselves already. Their commitment and dedication to the new concept of bring the art of fashion business into a learning environment is certainly working!

This week the Fashion Entrepreneurs went to review production and auxiliary services to help them succeed with their design collections and also understand the work involved with production and the use of auxiliary services.

Starting with a visit to Marcos Trimmings a speciality service provider of all components required for production ranging from thread, buttons, zips, ribbons and labels the team meet the owner Marcos and reviewed products available.

PUT HERE THE PICTURE

The next port of call was the Workshop unit based at Unit 5 Mavros House, 95 Vale Road, Haringay, N4 1TG, Tel: 0208 800 9979, where the Fashion Entrepreneurs met with Feride Aydemir who was working on patterns for asos.com and gave a brief overview of her the role of a pattern cutter. The seminar then commenced to review important documentation that is required by designers when working with factories.

This included

• Dockets

• First fit sample sheet
• Style File Sheet (as used by high street retailers such as Marks and Spencer's)
• Size Chart and Grading rules
• Product costing sheet.
• Range planning document.

There was further discussion regarding Invoice terms and conditions and the importance of the use of Confidentiality Agreements too. These will be further discussed in the class room environment.

Following a short break the Fashion Entrepreneurs then visited Florentia Clothing Village and also a printers for T-shirt embellishment and printing for their eventual collection.

The session which was due to finish at 2.30 went on until 4.00 but this was one big learning experience and one busy day!

Stephanie Whearam commented:

"This course is really helping me with my career. I am working towards running my own fashion event company that will provide an eclectic mix of services to help the incredibly busy designers of today. These services will include styling, photographic shoots, fashion shows and events and act as a general support art for a range of designer clients. We are now working towards a fashion event December the 6^th at Vicarage Fields and this is just what I need personally. I am now working on press releases and collating a database to help me with event. The rest of the team of Fashion Entrepreneurs are great – there is a real team environment within in our group and we are all pulling together to get our careers off the ground."

Next week is half term then back to the class room environment to study further about blocks and patterns.