London Fashion Week Diary: Day Four

Another great day today... I met so many friends both personal and professional and spent most of the day catching up with people...
Also caught the fabulous Pam Hogg, Hermione de Paula and FAD shows...

With her trademark penchant for cat suits in full swing Pam was in her element for the AW10 collection entitled ‘Valley of the Shadow of Darkness’. With futuristic metallic’s featuring heavily on the catwalk even the hair and make-up took a turn for the futuristic with the models sporting heavy eyebrows reminiscent of a certain Captain Spock.

With a procession of well known celebrities including Jodie Harsh, Ex-All Saint Melanie Blatt (with beautiful daughter in tow), Pearl Lowe, Peaches Geldof and Jaime Winstone, it was a paparazzi photographer’s dream! I also spotted Nick Cave sneak in, followed by Jefferson Hack.

On Mon­day night I was delighted to be invited to the 2010 FAD com­pe­ti­tion com­pris­ing of a cat­walk show and awards cer­e­mony held within  Freema­sons Hall, Venue of Vaux­hall Fash­ion Scout. Short­hand for ‘Fash­ion Aware­ness Direct’, a reg­is­tered char­ity since 2005, the com­pany ethos focuses on mak­ing ‘the per­son cen­tral to design, pro­mot­ing respect to the wearer and inte­grat­ing art and cul­ture into fashion’.

With the focus of Monday’s event being the FAD com­pe­ti­tion, I was very excited to see what the 14 short­listed design­ers would present.

With only three awards (bronze, sil­ver and gold) on offer, the judg­ing panel made an excep­tion and granted a fourth designer, Vera Thor­dar­d­ot­tir a spe­cial men­tion for her inspired sculp­tural lace col­lec­tion, reward­ing her efforts with a work place­ment at William Tem­pest.

In bronze posi­tion was Rebecca Solity, of DeMont­ford Uni­ver­sity whose lay­ered satin and chif­fon pieces received rap­tur­ous applause when they went down the cat­walk. Inspired by what appeared to be the late 1970s, Rebecca’s colour palette was grey and cream, uti­liz­ing volu­mi­nous shapes to great effect, embell­ish­ing her satin jump­suit with a util­ity belt and mock-medals, earn­ing her a work place­ment with Jonathan Saun­ders.

The run­ner up was Alice-Jane Hut­ton, whose two out­fits con­sisted of chic sep­a­rates with heav­ily padded shoul­ders and exquis­ite laser-cut Per­spex jew­ellery. Win­ning her­self a work place­ment with esteemed British designer Sir Paul Smith!

Finally the over­all win­ner of the 2010 FAD com­pe­ti­tion was Rasa Abra­mavi­ciute, a sec­ond year fash­ion stu­dent at Mid­dle­sex Uni­ver­sity. With a fash­ion for­ward cap­sule range of knit­ted tex­tural dresses Rasa was most cer­tainly the stand out designer of the show, with sev­eral peo­ple in the front row gasp­ing at the sheer detail and immac­u­late fin­ish applied to her designs. Her first dress, inspired by mem­o­ries of her child­hood, was con­structed entirely from leather with Lithuan­ian folk print and inno­v­a­tive 3-D origami details. The sec­ond out­fit rep­re­sented the unity of her coun­try, with a patch­work car­pet dress in earthy shades, per­fectly com­pli­mented by a struc­tural leather jacket. Win­ning first prize of a place­ment with none other than Dame Vivi­enne West­wood and £2,000!!!