Comparative Design: High Street – High End

My name is Elouise Potter and I am currently undertaking work experience at Fashion Enter & FashionCapital, a social enterprise that supports new and emerging designers. They also manufacture garments from design to delivery for certain high street brands. Fashion Enter is a very ethical company, they passed there SMETA and Fast Forward inspection effortlessly, meaning every process has been properly checked from immigration to the working environment.

In a world of quality fast fashion, I am comparing similarities and differences between high end catwalk garments shown at London Fashion Week to high street fashion trends. These outfits have a significant price difference but both follow the same popular trends.

The garment on the left is currently being made in the factory in scuba for ASOS.com, while the garment on the right is from Amy Thomson AW18 showing today, 16th Feb, during London Fashion Week via the Fashion Scout platform. Both of these dresses have frills, one with continuous layers below one another and the other has one has a main frill along the neckline of the dress. The ASOS.com dress also has a waterfall frill spiralling down from the sleeve, produced by Fashion Enter this garment has slightly more shape to the frill which is due to being gathered more and the weight and feel of the fabric.

Both dresses are varying shades of pink but the Amy Thomson one includes two different shades. The high street dress is a lot more wearable compared to the catwalk piece but then again a different target market applies to both brands. The Amy Thomson dress looks like it’s made of silk and also looks hand printed so you would excpect this dress to be far more expensive and exclusive, however I do think this demonstrates how quickly garments and fashion evolves in both market sectors.

I thought these two above were quite similar, once again frill inspired there is the inclusion of layers. What is clearly different is the look of the boned skirt showing a dramatic ballgown style silhouette. You can see how high street can take a key designer trend and filter it down to make it more accessible.

This has been a really interesting comparison for me to do and I’ve enjoyed looking on the factory floor and comparing current styles to London Fashion Week new looks. At Kingston College I am on a Fashion and Clothing course and I came on this work experience with the hope it would help me decide what part of the fashion industry I would like to work in. For me this week has been a complete eye-opener into the real fashion world, I have loved watching the garments being made right in front of me and I also found all my other tasks including writing articles and arranging events really interesting too. This week has helped me to figure out what I want to do in life and much more. I have had a great chance to meet some amazing designers and people with a lot of experience in the fashion industry. I hope to be back at Fashion Enter soon.